Thousands of photos of children downloaded in hack of toymaker VTech

(Image credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

last updated 1 December 2015

A hacker who gained access to the servers of Hong Kong electronic toymaker VTech obtained more than just the email addresses, passwords, and home addresses of nearly five million adults — he or she also found tens of thousands of photos of children.

"Frankly, it makes me sick I was able to get all this stuff," the hacker, who asked to remain anonymous, told Motherboard's Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai. "VTech should have the book thrown at them." The hacker said some of the data came from VTech's Kid Connect service, which lets parents using an app on their smart phones chat with their kids on a VTech tablet. The hacker found thousands of pictures used as avatars on the app, chat messages between parents and their kids, and audio files. "I have the personal information of the parent and the profile pictures, emails, [Kid Connect] passwords, nicknames... of everyone in their Kid Connect contacts list," the hacker said.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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