Rather than its own terrible code. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2016/02/11/vtech-blames-parents-for-breaches/1
Troy Hunt's blog is very well written and a shocking in-sight into VTech's blatant neglect of basic security. What's worse, is that VTech are looking to buy (or maybe have bough leap frog), so the next time you register an account (or the existing account is taken over by Vtech), so you can managed your child leap reader pen stories for example, think about all that personal information they might be unsafely storing on you and your family! Awful.
Just out of interest, what possible personal information would a young child have that would need to be collected? I can't get my head around why you'd even need to collect any.
So effectively, when you buy one of these product, you use software they provide, to managed the product via your PC/MAC, but the reason they take your personal information, address, name, location etc, is because you can buy additional apps, books or software updates. They use it for billing, delivery of physical goods and warranty. The reason they have children's names (Wrongly IMO) is for the customization and personalization of the product for your child/children. So say for example, you have 2 children, different ages or reading competency, you might have different books/app loaded into each child's profile. When they turn their leaptop reader on for example, it can greet your child by name and will load only the stuff you put on there. It all seems to innocent and useful as a tool until you consider that post breach, millions of customers information in now in the hands of god knows who, and they know where you live, who your children are and what product they have. It chills me to think how casually we give up this information and how grossly negligent some of these companies are when it comes to data protection.
Okay, I get that, but why is that sort of information not then stored locally on the devise itself? Why the need to be stored in a cloud server somewhere? I agree with you how easily we sign away our digital lives so readily for the sake of convenience.
You can't sell that data to other companies if you don't have immediate access to it. A big chunk of the value of these databases is that they're instant accurate market research.
Agreed. Thing is, I remember having an electronic 'learning aid/tool/toy/thing' when I was a kid, it could greet me by name (if I gave it the right one), had different books for different difficulty levels... and didn't go online at all. It was just a dumb monochrome LCD with A-Z, 0-9, Space, Enter basic punctuation and a couple of others I forget. Used two AAA batteries, no WiFi, no USB (to be fair, neither had been invented!) no external connections at all. Yet it lasted for years and years. I handed it down to my cousins when I outgrew it. I think they gave it to their neighbours kids when they outgrew it. Why (other than companies are too nosey for their own good) do these things even need to go online? ... Although, let's face it, VTech is just copying several other larger, more popular and well known computer company's in saying it's not their fault...
This is the crux of the matter though. Despite trying to absolve themselves of any responsibility, they are still required, under various data legislation acts, to make sure that any personal data they hold is kept safe and secure. Trying to blame parents for lapses in VTech's own security and VTech's sheer laziness is just stupid and surely just leaving them open to a massive class action suit (if there isn't one already)?
Kids these days... MY learning aid ran on four C batteries and didn't have a provision to enter or store a name. Heck, it barely had room to store the words it was going to speak, and figuring out what it said was as much of a game as actually doing what it said. It DID, however, feature in a major motion picture by Steven Spielberg. "Spell 'old'. O. L. D. You are correct!" It also went through both of my sisters before coming back to me as a nostalgia piece. It still works as well now as it did when I was little.
