Subscriptions are all over the place, which can certainly make accessing an app and all it has to offer pretty easy. But it’s also an easy way for some nefarious individuals out there to try and scam App Store customers. In an effort to help reduce that, Apple has added an additional step when confirming a subscription purchase.

Developer David Barnard was the first to notice the change on Thursday. The change itself was apparently only implemented recently. With the change in place, folks who go through the process will run into one additional step in the process to confirm the purchase of a subscription. In this case, it actually pops up after you’ve already confirmed the purchase with either Touch ID or Face ID.

Now, after you’ve confirmed your identity with the biometric security measure, you’ll get another pop-up that asks if you want to confirm the subscription. There are two options: “Cancel” and “OK”. Choosing the latter option will secure your subscription purchase, while the former will cancel the purchase altogether.

There are plenty of scam apps out there of all kinds, but some of the worst are the ones that trick the owner into using something like Touch ID to confirm a purchase of an app. We’ve seen these crop up in the past, and they can be linked to a recurring payment through a subscription model that’s not properly outlined. This additional step, which pops up after the biometric security step, should help limit those types of accidental purchases in a big way.

Our Take

This is a nice step, and one that’s also overdue. But, better late than never. As David Barnard notes, one has to wonder if iOS 13 will see this second step gets a bit more elegant in iOS 13, but then again the big pop up like in its current state may be on purpose. Just to make sure that the subscription purchase is wanted by the user.

[via MacRumors; @drbarnard]