On Black Friday 2015, a hacker broke into the servers of Chinese toy maker VTech and stole the information of five million parents and more than 200,000 children. The data included names, home addresses,birth dates , email addresses, and passwords. Even worse, it had photographs and chat logs with parents and children.
This attack raised serious concern: as more toys connect to the internet. How many millions of children are in danger due to these internet criminals? These kinds of hacks can be used for phishing scams designed to target people through their email addresses and get them to click the trigger malicious software which lets the hackers steal even more sensitive information.
The attack on VTech was one of the largest hacks recently. Unfortunately, as we grow more connected to the smart devices, we will have to come to terms with the reality that there are evil people out there who look to exploit vulnerabilities in these smart devices.
It’s really important that we consider the impact of exposing our children to these smart devices. Be careful when retailers ask for personal information. They mostly collect this information to market to you, or sell the data to third party vendors. Guard your kids and just use common sense when letting them use smart devices. Stay safe!
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