And finally… supersonic

Earlier this year, the boy’s mother Jessica Johnson discovered someone was buying items worth thousands of dollars and charging them to her bank account. It turned out to be her son.

Over the course of a month, her son had spent the money on magic rings in the Sonic the Hedgehog game on her phone.

The rings, costing between $1.99 and $99.99, offered power boosts and other advantages in the hedgehog’s fight against Dr Eggman and his associates.

Ms Johnson said her son didn’t understand that the money was real, The Times reports.

Ms Johnson told The New York Post that she had assumed, with the advice of her bank, that the charges were fraudulent and filed a claim for reimbursement. The bank then told her the charges of $16,293.10 were genuine purchases through Apple’s app store and that she needed to contact the company.

Apple said that it could do nothing because she had not alerted it within 60 days. A customer service agent said she ought to have put preventive settings on her phone.

Apple said its customers are asked if they would like to install parental controls when they are setting up a new device and it advises that devices should be protected with passwords.

In 2014, the company settled a suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission by paying $32.5 million in refunds to parents whose children had made purchases without consent.