Vtech is the Taiwanese kids' crapgadget vendor that breached sensitive data on 6.3 million children and their families, lied about it and covered it up, then added a dirty EULA to its products that made us promise not to sue them if they did it again.
Last December, Vtech, a crapgadget/toy company, suffered a breach that implicated the data of 6.3 million children, caused by its negligence toward the most basic of security measures.
Remember the Hong Kong-based crapgadgeteer Vtech, who breached 6.3 million kids' data from a database whose security was jaw-droppingly poor (no salted hashes, no code-injection countermeasures, no SSL), who then lied and stalled after they were outed? They want to make home security devices that will know everything you say and do in your house.
The Hong Kong-based toymaker/crapgadget purveyor didn't even know it had been breached until journalists from Vice asked why data from its millions of customers and their families were in the hands of a hacker, and then the company tried to downplay the breach and delayed telling its customers about it.
Vtech is a ubiquitous Hong Kong-based electronic toy company whose kiddy tablets and other devices are designed to work with its cloud service, which requires parents to set up accounts for their kids. 4.8 million of those accounts just breached, leaking a huge amount of potentially compromising information, from kids' birthdays and home addresses to parents passwords and password hints.
"SWWE #74: Tribute to the Analog Shift Register"
In a letter sent to Congress, Amazon has admitted that its doorbell-cam company, Ring, sends footage to law enforcement without a warrant or the consent of the owners, and has done so 11 times so far in 2022. CNN Business:
— Read the restThe July 1 letter responding to questions by Sen.
If you only think of drones as silly diversions or big kid toys, you're selling the technology and its overall impact short. In Southern California, police drones and the AI running them are changing how law enforcement is being done. — Read the rest
Every time I write about the unfolding scandal of Amazon's secret partnerships with hundreds of US police departments who get free merch and access to Ring surveillance doorbell footage in exchange for acting as a guerrilla marketing street-team for Ring, I get an affronted email from Amazon PR, implying that I got it all wrong, but unwilling to enter into detailed discussions of what's actually going on (the PR flacks also usually ask to be quoted officially but anonymously, something I never agree to). — Read the rest
I needed a new cordless handset for my home POTS line. I wanted no-frills, just a phone. This works wonderfully.
Every decade or so I need a new phone for my landline. My former AT&T model's reception had degraded so badly, from drops of both the base and handset, that I couldn't move around the house while I talk. — 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).
The Norwegian Consumer Council hired a security firm called Mnemonic to audit the security of four popular brands of kids' smart watches and found a ghastly array of security defects: the watches allow remote parties to seize control over them in order to monitor children's movements and see where they've gone, covertly listen in on them, and steal their personal information. — Read the rest
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 week, security researcher Chris Vickery discovered a database containing 3.3 million accounts from Sanriotown, a commercial Hello Kitty fansite operated by Sanrio, Hello Kitty's corporate owners.
Articles in the UK and US press describe fraudsters who used public document registries to steal entire houses, using forged documents to list the houses for sale, transferring title to them, and disappearing (or attempting to) with a lot of money in their pockets.
Lava Mae is a startup that renovates donated, surplus San Francisco city buses, fitting them out with accessible showers that can be brought to homeless people around town.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency was formed in 2008 amid the housing panic. Among other functions, it is the regulatory organ overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It has not escaped notice that the agency has one of the blandest seals in the federal sector, a design realm traditionally adorned with wreaths, garlands and star-studded ostentation. — Read the rest
• The "getting-ready-for-marriage" bra: counts down until the big day AND plays the wedding march.
• The MSI X340 X-Thin netbook reviewed. Click here for the verdict.
• Twitt jr = what happens when you pump your Twitter stream through an IBM PCjr with a 4.77MHz processor and 16-color monitor. — Read the rest
