Children’s data exposed in VTech toy company hack

It is important to note that its customer database does not contain any credit card information and VTech does not process nor store any customer credit card data on the Learning Lodge website.

As many as 5 million parents and 200,000 children had their personal information exposed, according to Motherboard, who first reported the story and is in contact with the hacker responsible for the breach.

In its original announcement, VTech had stated its Learning Lodge was compromised; soon after, the company revealed that its Kid Connect messaging app, which is included on the maker’s tablets, was also targeted.

In its apology, VTech said it has suspended the affected Learning Lodge service, and is notifying customers.

There remains no evidence the hacker in the breach is seeking to profit from the data or cause harm to those affected.

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. “We are committed to protecting our customers’ information and their privacy to ensure against any such incidents in the future”. 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. It is investigating the breach and says it has taken steps to prevent another one from happening. Hunt added that the security flaws could have been identified by VTech “if only they’d looked”. “Always think carefully about the information you share”. The firm also reiterated Monday that its customer database does not contain any credit card information or personal identification data such as ID card numbers, Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers.