Learning Lodge, which is similar to app stores like Google Play, is aimed at parents, offering them additional educational content that can be downloaded onto various VTech devices.
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While general user information has been accessed, VTech says that its customer database didn’t contain any credit card information.
The company said that no credit card information was obtained in this hack.
While the company didn’t disclose the exact number of affected customers in its statement, it’s possible that as many as five million parents and 200,000 children had their personal information exposed, according to Motherboard, who first reported the story.
The database that was compromised holds user profile information such as names, email addresses, encrypted passwords, password retrieval questions and answers, IP addresses, mailing addresses and download histories.
The firm sells a range of electronic products ranging from toy cars and interactive garages to cameras, games, e-books and tablets. The database does not contain any personal identification data either, the company said.
Meanwhile, the childrens’ names, genders, and birth dates were also logged.
In response to the hack, VTech closed temporarily its Learning Lodge store and is working to improve the site’s security. The top 10 list also includes the hacking on Ashley Madison this 2015 involving more than 30 million accounts.
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VTech said that the hacked database stored information on customers from the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Australia, New Zealand, Hong King, China, and Latin America. This information is provided on a secure, third party payment gateway during the check-out process. The hacker said he intends to do “nothing” with the data, according to Motherboard. “Customers affected should be suspicious of any emails or even phone calls that relate to the breach, no matter how plausible, and should not give away more personal information”, said Moor.
