Selfies of children and their parents were part of data stolen in the VTech hack that saw more than five million customers’ details illegally accessed.
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VTech makes digital toys and electronic learning tools. The company said it immediately began an investigation of the hack, which involved checking the affected site and implementing “measures to defend against any further attacks”.
The Learning Lodge app store is a service that lets people buy educational apps and games.
“Regretfully our database was not as secure as it should have been”, VTech said in a statement updated Tuesday. He verified a sample of the stolen data leaked over the Internet, which includes sensitive user information such as names, genders, date of births along with addresses.
Motherboard reported on Monday that the hackers also stole photos and chat logs from VTech’s Kid Connect service, which allows adults to use their smartphones to chat with kids using VTech tablet.
The hacking serves as a reminder to parents to be careful about what kinds of information about their children they enter into on Internet-connected devices.
VTech did not respond to requests for comment on the state probes or the Motherboard reports, which Reuters could not independently verify.
Thanks to a security breach at toy maker VTech, that nightmare just became a reality for thousands of parents.
VTech Holdings Ltd. says it has contacted all of the affected users by email and has temporarily suspended its Learning Lodge website and some others as a precaution.
VTech has reached out to every account holder in the database, via email, to alert them of the breach and the potential exposure of their account data. VTech customers also use Learning Lodge to register accounts, both for themselves and their children.
Speaking with Motherboard, the hacker said that he does not intend to publish or sell the data.
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The hacker claiming responsibility for the breach appears to have only shared the information with Motherboard and says he is going to do “nothing” with the data, the publication reports.
