It's called Cayla, it's about a foot tall, and it can be used to listen to and talk to the child playing with it. But who is doing the listening? Anyone in Bluetooth range, reports Germany's Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). — Read the rest

One by one, the New York Times warns of the dangers of every hot smart toy your kids are begging for this Xmas: Furbies, Cayla, kids' smart watches, the ubiquitous Vtech toys (they omit the catastrophic Cloudpets, presumably because that company is out of business now).

Two leading European consumer groups — the UK's Which? and Germany's Stiftung Warentest — have published an advisory with the results of their lab tests on the security of kids' connected toys, warning that these toys are insecure and could allow strangers to listen in and talk to your kids over the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcxNHgYUz6s

Spiral Toys — a division of Mready, a Romanian electronics company that lost more than 99% of its market-cap in 2015 — makes a line of toys called "Cloudpets," that use an app to allow parents and children to exchange voice-messages with one another. — Read the rest

Last year's Hello Barbie chatbot toy sent all your kid's speech to cloud servers operated by Mattel and its tech partner, but only when your kid held down Barbie's listen button — new chatbot toys like My Friend Cayla and the i-Que Intelligent Robot are in constant listening mode — as is your "OK Google" enabled phone, your Alexa-enabled home mic, and your Siri-enabled Ios device — and everything that is uttered in mic range is transmitted to Nuance, a company that makes text-to-speech tech (you probably know them through their Dragon-branded tools), and contracts to the US military.

Boing Boing readers in Houston and other areas in Rita's projected path — and yes, spaceships, I'm talking to you too — y'all stay safe out there. Reader Bruce Heerssen in Houston says,

I am currently in the Heights in Houston, which is at the highest elevation in the city; about 50 to 60 feet above sea level.