Digital company and online store V Tech specializes in children’s technology products and learning tools. Just in time for the Christmas shopping season, V Tech faces a security crisis.
There’s been a massive breach at V Tech. It’s so massive that investigators and security experts believe up to 200,000 children and 4.8 million parents have been hacked. The only good thing about this cyber attack in no credit card numbers were affected, because V Tech’s database doesn’t contain them. But it’s believed adult names, email accounts, IP addresses and online histories have been compromised. What’s more disturbing is the information of child customers: their names, birthdays and genders were compromised as well. According to news site Motherboard, they stole photos and online chat information. V Tech insists affected customers were contacted. Some accounts were even shut down as a precaution. Security experts are warning more attacks against digital toys are likely. One reason is these toys lack security expertise and software development that most adult devices now have. One such expert believes V Tech missed the mark in securing data and allowed unscrambling the data to be too easy. V Tech is based out of Hong Kong, China. According to Motherboard, an anonymous hacker has claimed responsibility. This hacker says he will do nothing with the data.
Then why did he hack the data to start with? Why did he put millions of livelihoods on the line, including the privacy of over 200,000 children? Couldn’t there had been a better way to prove a point? But I will admit, there’s a point that needs to be made. We need to do a better job securing children’s toys and technology. If we fail to secure our kids’ toys, then we fail our kids. It’s that simple. There’s no telling what kind of predators would take advantage of this. That’s the scariest part of all. What can be done to keep digital toys safe?