Many children and young teenagers will soon get conneted toys for Christmas. These toys linked to the internet by your home network are equally at risk of being hacked than your own computer or tablet.

The fact that an intruder (hacker) can access the toy to grab a name, an email address, a password or more important details such as date of birth or other information on its usual routes or location is still much more serious with a child because he is innocent and vulnerable.

This is not fiction. Already, several connected toys have been targeted and even criticized for their security weakness. To date, the Hello Barbie and some child safety cameras were hacked.

Clearly, this situation puts at risk children that can be watched or photographed. A prime target for cyber criminals who will not hesitate to create stressful situations or extort money with the information they have collected.

Toy safety

If it is easier to hack connected toys it’s because companies are largely unconcerned about the safety of these toys either by related costs or by some poor quality components. We are also at the beginning of this type of toy and laws fail to follow or are inapplicable.

We must therefore ensure the toy safety is enough and filter the data entered via the website linking the toy or those entered directly on it. Your home network is protected? The network of the car too? Your children have a subnet with a parental control?

So this Christmas do not think just to offer that beautiful toy but asked yourself what is the potential security risk that this toy could bring to your family. Check the game consoles and sometimes your children’s conversations. They must be protected!