Vtech confirm 4.8million customers hacked

According to Vtech, the Learning Lodge database was first accessed on November 14, as 4.8 million customer names, email addresses, and passwords of adult users were all compromised.

Stolen data for the parents includes mailing and email addresses, security questions used for password resets, IP addresses, passwords and download histories. “The database also contains kids” information, including names, genders and birth dates.

A Chinese educational toy company with revenues of over US$2 billion has suffered a data breach where the personal information of five million customers, both parents and children, were stolen.

The company initially revealed the breach on Friday, but declined to disclose how many children’s profiles were affected.

The breach affected the customer database for Learning Lodge, an app store for VTech’s devices, as well as the Kid Connect servers. The hacker, or hackers, was able to access data housed in VTech’s Learning Lodge app store, according to the company. According to the toy maker, it’s sending out emails to all account holders to alert them of the breach. VTech said it couldn’t confirm that images were leaked, but Motherboard published partially obscured images that it said it obtained from the hacker.

It also said that the database doesn’t contain personally identifying information such as ID card numbers or driving license information.

“We are committed to protecting our customer information and their privacy, to ensure against any such incidents in the future”, reads a statement from VTech.

The majority of the people hacked – more than 2.2 million parents and almost 2.9 million kids – are in the U.S. The hacks were spread across more than a dozen countries, including France, the United Kingdom and Germany.

As the full scope of this hack comes to light, things aren’t looking too good for VTech.

Security experts have rounded on the company for failing to provide what they said were basic protections against cyber-attacks. We will update this post with any response.

It is investigating the breach and says it has taken steps to prevent another one.