All checklists, in one printable place
Every checklist from the five steps is gathered here in order. The boxes are printed squares, not controls: this page does not remember anything, because nothing on this site stores information in your browser. Print it, or copy the lines onto paper, and tick them with a pen.
How to use them
The checklists are written to be worked through rather than read. Each one belongs to a step, and each step explains why its items are there. If you use the list without the step, you will do the tasks without knowing which of them you are allowed to skip, which defeats the point. Read the step first, at least once.
They are deliberately long. That is because they are meant to be done once, slowly, rather than remembered. The Step 4 list in particular looks heavier than it is: most of its items take under a minute, and the whole sequence fits inside a Saturday morning.
Not every item applies to every household. A household with no child in it can skip most of the age and supervision items and should still do the payment and password ones. A household where the player is fifteen rather than eleven will treat the device-control items as a conversation rather than a configuration. Cross out what does not apply before you start, so that an unticked box always means something.
Do them in order inside each list. The sequencing is the main thing the checklists add over a general list of good ideas, particularly in Step 4, where setting the device controls after the game is installed is the usual source of household arguments.
Two of the lists repeat. The Step 5 list is the one you will come back to, every three months, and it is written so that re-doing it takes about twenty minutes rather than an hour. The settings pass inside Step 4 is the other recurring item, because an update can add a setting whose default nobody chose.
Where a checklist item sends you to an Australian government site, that is because the body named is the authority on the point and publishes current material for free. None of those links costs anything and none of them requires an account. Where an item sends you to a vendor, it is because only the vendor can answer the question — prices, settings names and age requirements change, and a figure copied here would eventually be wrong.
Finally, an unticked box is not a failure. The course is written so that stopping at the end of Step 2, with a written half page and no account, is a complete and reasonable outcome. The checklists exist to make a decision easier to reach, not to push anyone toward a particular answer.
Before you begin
From the course overview
- Write down who in the household is actually going to play, and their age.
- Write down which device they will play on, and who owns that device.
- Check whether a payment method is already saved on that device or in its app store account.
- Decide, in advance, what the household's answer is to "can I buy something?"
- Check whether the game has an Australian classification at classification.gov.au.
- Agree a single email address for the account, and decide who has access to that mailbox.
Step 1 — What an account involves
Read the step
- Say out loud, in your own words, where the game and the account live.
- Write down the name of the game you have actually been asked about, spelled correctly.
- Find the game's own website, rather than a fan site or a video about it.
- Find the page where the terms of service are published.
- Find the page where the privacy policy is published.
- Decide which email arrangement suits your household, and write the decision down.
- If the answer is a new address, create it now, before anything else exists.
- Agree between the adults who holds the password to that mailbox.
- Read one page of account advice on cyber.gov.au.
- Check whether a payment method is already saved on the device.
- Say nothing final to the person who asked.
Step 2 — What your household needs
Read the step
- Write the player's name and current age at the top of a page.
- Add whether anyone else will use the same account.
- Name the device, and name who owns it.
- Check whether that device is signed in to a store account belonging to an adult.
- Check whether a payment card is saved in that store account.
- Find out whether players can message each other.
- Find out whether messages can be limited or switched off.
- Find out how to report and block another player.
- Read one page of parent guidance on esafety.gov.au.
- Write the shape of playing time, not a number of hours.
- Write the name of the person who enforces it.
- Choose one of the three money answers and write it down.
- Set a review date three months out and put it in a calendar.
- Read the half page aloud to everyone it applies to.
Step 3 — Reading the fine print
Read the step
- Search classification.gov.au for the exact game title.
- Write down the category and the consumer advice line, word for word.
- Search the privacy policy for "collect".
- Search it for "share" or "third part".
- Search it for "transfer" or "outside".
- Search it for "child" or "parent".
- Find the minimum age statement in the terms of service.
- Find what the terms say about suspension and appeal.
- Find what the terms say about purchases if an account ends.
- Find how the company says it will tell players about changes.
- Note the currency any prices are shown in.
- Note whether anything renews by itself.
- Read one page of consumer guidance on accc.gov.au.
- Read one current example on scamwatch.gov.au and tell the player about it.
- Add what you found to the half page, and decide whether it still says the same thing.
Step 4 — Setting up and checking
Read the step
- Confirm an adult can read the registered mailbox.
- Open the device's family or screen-time settings and configure them.
- Set a limit on hours of the day, not only on total minutes.
- Remove the saved card from the store account, or require a check for every purchase.
- Clear any card saved in the browser on that device.
- Write down in one line what you did about payment.
- Type the vendor's web address yourself rather than following a link.
- Choose a passphrase of several unrelated words, used nowhere else.
- Record it where the adults in the household have agreed.
- Switch on the extra login check if the service offers one.
- Choose a display name with no surname, school, suburb or birth year.
- Read every page of the account settings and decide each one.
- Set who may send messages, and who may send requests.
- Begin a purchase, confirm the prompt appears, and cancel.
- Test a three-minute time limit and see what it does.
- Confirm the account email arrived in the right mailbox.
- Agree the stopping point before the first session starts.
- Sit through the first session and write down anything that surprised you.
Step 5 — Living with it
Read the step
- Put a quarterly review in a calendar with a reminder.
- At each review, open the card statement and search for the merchant name.
- Open the store account's purchase history and read the list.
- Say the result out loud to the player, including when it is nothing.
- Check whether any subscription is renewing that nobody intended.
- Re-do the settings pass and look for new settings.
- Read any email saying the terms or the privacy policy have changed.
- Re-read the half page and change one variable at a time, with a date.
- Confirm the player still knows how to block and report another player.
- Confirm nobody has reused the game passphrase on another service.
- Decide, before each school holiday, whether the game travels.
- Check the mobile data position before a long trip.
- If closing: cancel the subscription where it was bought, and confirm it.
- Ask the vendor to close the account and delete personal information.
- Remove the game from the device last, not first.
- Keep the registered mailbox working for several months afterwards.