And Vtech has not responded to requests for comment on the matter.
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The affected database doesn’t contain any credit card numbers, or personally identification information such as Social Security or driver’s license numbers, VTech says.
The Hong Kong-based company noted that “an unauthorized party” accessed VTech customer data on the Learning Lodge app store database November 14. “Hackers are likely to trade the stolen data as well as try to trick customers into revealing further personal details using targeted phishing emails”, said Check Point UK regional director Simon Moor.
In a statement posted on its website on Tuesday, it disclosed that the number of children affected exceeded the number of adults, with data on some 6.4 million children accessed along with data on 4.9 million parents. Vtech said its customer information, including names, email addresses, encrypted passwords, secret questions and answers for password retrieval, IP addresses, mailing addresses and download history was exposed. Security expert Troy Hunt showed how simple the attack was by replicating it.
Thanks to a security breach at toy maker VTech, that nightmare just became a reality for thousands of parents.
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According to the report by Motherboard, the company actually left sensitive data, which included the photos on its servers, this also included chat logs between parents and their children, this information was found in the company’s Kid Connect service which lets parents communicate with their kids on Vtech devices. Hunt believes that users should not expect that VTech has shored up the breach yet. “Clearly manufacturers should be taking greater care over data security and privacy, but parents should also be more careful with their children’s personal information”, he explained in an email to FoxNews.com. “Always think carefully about the information you share”.
