With everyone rushing around to find the latest gadget this holiday season, we just don’t realize that data on those gadgets is being collected.
Alan Crowetz, CEO of Infostream www.infostream.cc and Internet Security Expert for WPTV, was interviewed this month by the news channel and said that information is valuable to hackers.
He went on to say that what appeared to be perfectly harmless items like a smart watch or a fit bit can be a target. These gadgets are getting smarter and smarter all the time. We need to think if it tracks when we go out, and what kind of stuff it is recording and also just who is getting this information.
Recently VTech toys were hacked and the personal information of millions of children who us the tablets to play seemingly innocent games, was compromised. Alan suggests that more children’s toys are becoming vulnerable to hacking.
Things to which we never gave a second thought before, are now happening with these new toys, and the companies making them don’t know what they are doing with security added Alan. Even toys that record kids’ voices and play them back might not be as innocent as it should be and therefore poses a security risk.
We can listen to what the child has recorded: the toy says their name back, we can ask them what are their favorite things and record those. The toy is seemingly a genius as it talks back to the child ‘learning’ and gathering more information as it goes, yet it has almost no security says Alan.
Before buying such toys, Alan suggest researching the toy company or the toy’s security settings. He added that for greater security, the Bluetooth feature on devices should always be turned off when not actually in use and another good tip is not to use the same password on you devices but a different one for each one.
