VTech, maker of children's electronic toys, is in the news. (Photo : Twitter)
The award-winning supplier of electronic learning toys VTech recently faced a massive data breach that caused alarm to millions of parents.
The hacking of information from a portal utilized to download games to computer tablets was regarded as a serious security incident.
It exposed sensitive data, including names, birth dates, genders, email addresses, passwords, and home addresses of over 4.8 million parents, along with the first names, and birthdays of over 200,000 kids.
The hacker also gained access to headshots of parents and their kids, plus about a year's worth of chat logs and audio recordings stored on the VTech site.
VTech implemented measures as a safeguard against future attacks, following a thorough investigation on the unfortunate circumstance and notification of affected customers.
VTech eased customer worries that no credit card information was stored on its customer database. The company also suspended 13 websites apart from Learning Lodge to fortify security measures, the company announced in a press release.
Web security specialist and global speaker Troy Hunt said in his website that while data breaches are "the new normal," exposing children's identities to a hacker is a whole new level.
Hunt tweeted that firms like VTech ought to be heaped penalties for gross negligence. There were lessons to learn from the incident that sent ripples of concern to digital users/consumers.
The massive data breach speaks volumes about an organization's keen attention to securing captured data. Breach of highly personal information tends to be a recurring thing.
Well-meaning organizations should be held to higher standards, especially when they gather data about minors. As a concerned consumer tweeted, the data breach on the VTech Learning Lodge was "awful on all levels."
