Do you ever expose your children’s personal info when shopping online, using apps and similar? Not something you have thought about? Perhaps you could learn from V-tech Toys’ mistakes!
Anyone who is familiar with the V-tech brand will know that it’s dedicated to creating electronic toys and interactive devices that provide an educational experience for children. Unfortunately, its app store database called Learning Lodge has been hacked! The app store is a hub of activity with parents and children downloading a variety of e-books, games and applications for their V-tech devices.
On the 14th of November 2015, Learning Lodge app store experienced unauthorised access. Apparently children’s names, ages and genders were also exposed – just how many is not clear. Users became concerned when they learnt that the other details accessed included their username, email address, encrypted password, secret question and answer for retrieving the password, IP address, mailing address and a history of all the games, e-books and apps that they had downloaded in the past.
Unfortunately, V-tech Toys seem to have slacked on their security as the hack, which is said to be an SQL Injection, was a simple hack that could have been quite easily avoided with the correct security measures in place.
What can you do as an online user to protect yourself from falling victim to these types of hacks? Always check on the type of security measures that the online company or store has in place. Data and password encryption is important. More importantly, your password shouldn’t be easily accessible on their data base or system.
Be alert and be safe when making use of online platforms. Something as simple as downloading a game or app for your child’s educational benefit can result in a dangerous security risk for you and your child!
At Soteria Cloud, we take online security very seriously – not only in terms of cloud backups. If you have been the victim of similar online hacks, let us know! We’d love to hear your story and provide advice.
