There's a free app for everything nowadays.

 

There's an app to track your bus, keep up with the news, listen to music and hundreds of apps to play.

 

But how many of these free apps are actually free?

Jenny Leed works at a Gainesville restaurant and plays bejeweled blitz to relax.
 

Well, at least those are her intentions.

"If the game helps me relieve stress and then they stress me out by trying to charge me, it's kinda like not purposeful," Leed said. "It just adds more frustration."

Leed isn't the only one. According to ctwatchdog.com, getting charged to continue to use your app or to enhance your experience is something many people are upset about.

"All of a sudden I got a notice on my phone that said 'if you like to continue playing it'll be $3.99 and had I not hit no I would have been charged," Leed said. 

 

Dave Stanton is a managing developer at smartmediacreative.com and says this is very common.

"You get something for free, if you like it, you can pay to upgrade, pay to unlock levels, pay for things to go faster," Stanton said. "In some ways it's good."

But if your child has access to your i-device and knows your password, Stanton said "It's really easy for them to make $100 purchases for kind of a virtual currency. That's a little dangerous because they don't know that they are spending 100 real dollars of your money."

I-devices ask you for a password when making a purchase.

But keep an eye out for the text…no matter how small it is.

 

Now androids on the other hand, like Stanton's kindle fire, works a little different.

"This one I'm in, it just purchases. It doesn't ask me for a password," Stanton said. "There you see there's an order summary that I bought it for 99 cents."

Whether it's 99 cents or over a hundred dollars...Stanton says these app developers aren't doing anything illegal.

"It's not a scam because they tell you how much it costs, it throws up the security but I think it's a little intrusive in some of the games," Stanton says.

Intrusive and frustrating to users like Leed, and something all consumers should keep and eye out for.

"Just watch out for yourself, just make sure to watch everything," Leed said. "Make sure if you get a little notice to check out what they are giving you a notice for."