VTech, the Hong Kong based global supplier of kids learning toys, has recently suspended its Learning Lodge app store after a security breach on its server. The server is said to have the personal information of around 5 million parents and children, that were accessed by an unknown group of hackers.
The VTech database contains information of parents and children that span across the globe. The company has user accounts coming from the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg, Latin America, Hong Kong, China, New Zealand, and Australia. The company is also getting in touch with each individual affected by this mishap.
The VTech data breach, to be exact, has released information for 4,833,678 parents who have purchased a VTech product in the past. These include names, e-mail addresses, passwords, as well as home addresses. Sadly, more than 200,000 identities of children were also included in the breach, that includes first names, birthdays and gender information, the Motherboard explained of the incident.
It is, so far, the fourth largest consumer data breach that has happened to date. Experts who have reviewed the data were alarmed with the amount of information that were stolen. Any person who has access to this huge amount of data can link the kids with parents, and who knows what can happen from there.
The VTech breach incident happened on Nov. 14, but was not discovered by VTech themselves until somebody contacted them and asked a few questions. VTech acted immediately on the situation and adjusted the security settings on their website, Troy Hunt reported.
A VTech representative said, "Upon discovering the breach, we immediately made modifications to the security settings on the site to defend against any further attacks."
VTech also added that no credit card or banking information were taken since they do not process payments. A third-party payment company takes care of that particular process.
