According to a past statement from VTech, kids’ birthdays, names, genders and similar profile information was compromised.
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The Hong Kong-based company disclosed the breach of a customer database late last week, but didn’t say until Monday how many people could be affected.
Parent users are mostly upset by the breach of chat logs, download histories and photos of children who used the Kid Connect service to communicate with their parents, according to Reuters.
VTech Holdings, a digital toy maker, reported a cyberattack that breached information of approximately 4.8 million adults and more than 200,000 children, according to Motherboard.
The news comes just as the holiday shopping season is kicking into gear and kid’s smartwatches and tablets made by companies such as VTech are expected to be high on children’s wish lists. The firm said that the attack happened on its Learning Lodge application store.
Upon discovering the unauthorized access on 24 November 2015, the company noted that it immediately conducted a thorough investigation, which involved a comprehensive check of the affected site and implementation of measures to defend against any further attacks.
Anyone in possession of this data could possibly link the children to their parents, exposing families’ full identities.
It’s unclear why the company was storing this data on its servers.
Who was affected? The data breach exposed 5 million Vtech customer accounts from around the globe – the United States included. The company said that data on about 6.4 million children worldwide was exposed as hackers accessed personal info in more than a dozen countries via their products.
“Frankly, it makes me sick that I was able to get all this stuff”, the hacker told Motherboard via encrypted chat.
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VTech has not commented on the images, explained why they were stored on the servers, or verified their existence. Learning Lodge allows Vtech customers to download apps, games, e-books and other educational content to its Vtech products, including its InnoTabs.
