Spying on Kids Is as Easy as 123

Companies defend themselves by stating that the collected information is used to improve the quality of the toy’s ability by maintaining a fluent conversation with the child. They also reason that collecting audio is necessary to develop a toy capable of learning and growing along with the children. However, the information can be sold to third-party companies for targeted advertising purposes and, if any hacker ends up getting access to it, it can also be used to get inside your network and possibly access other smart devices, like your alarm system.¬

The problem of internet connected toys

Many of these toys use Wi-Fi connections and because they’re toys, you’ll probably want to protect them with a strong password. This only makes a hacker’s job easier though. All they need to do is gain access to the smart doll, and after that the network system is cracked open for them.

Furthermore, they can make the doll say whatever they want to the children, as evidenced by a benevolent hacker who exposed the security flaws in My Friend Cayla, making the cute doll to swear. All it took to break this particular doll was an unprotected Bluetooth connection and since there was no encryption, it was easy to turn Cayla nasty. Companies tend to learn and overcome such flaws by making their toys safer for children. However, according to the same hacker, in this particular case “all they did was put one more step in the process of getting it to swear for us”, which only shows how careful you must be when choosing their new interactive best friend.