Not so Merry: Hack of toymaker exposes data for millions of parents, kids

(Cyberwar.news) The holiday shopping season did not get off to a very good start for millions of parents and children, following news of a data breach involving some popular toys that will be wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree in the coming days and weeks.

Popular electronic toymaker VTech announced in recent days that customer information was likely stolen in mid-November by hackers.

In an announcement, the company said an “unauthorized party” gained access to customer data that was being stored in its Learning Lodge app store, where shoppers can go to download apps, e-books, games and other content for VTech products, The Consumerist reported, citing Motherboard.

Though VTech has assured its customers that the Learning Lodge cloud does not store credit card information or Social Security numbers, it does retain data including names, encrypted passwords, emails, IP addresses, mailing addresses, histories of downloads and the answers to questions that are used to retrieve passwords.

“Upon discovering the unauthorized access we immediately conducted a thorough investigation, which involved a comprehensive check of the affected site and implementation of measures to defend against any further attacks,” sad VTech in a statement.

The company would not specify the number of users whose data may have been breached, but it currently provides products and services to customers in the U.S., Canada, France, the U.K., Ireland, Germany, New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, Latin America, Luxembourg, Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and China, The Consumerist reported.

Meanwhile, Motherboard reports that the hacked data may include data for nearly 5 million adults who have purchased VTech products and the first names, genders, and birthdays of more than 200,000 children.

“The investigation continues as we look at additional ways to strengthen our Learning Lodge database security,” the company said. “We are committed to protecting our customer information and their privacy, to ensure against any such incidents in the future. Our Privacy Statement can be found on our website here.”

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