Kid's toys are recording and transmitting every conversation (Updated)
Image credit: Commercialfreechildhood
“Prepare your daughter for a lifetime of surveillance with Hello Barbie, the doll that records children’s private conversations and transmits them to cloud servers, where they are analyzed by algorithms and listened to by strangers. Girls will learn important lessons, like that a friend might really be a corporate spy, and that anything you say can and will be used for market research.”
Big Brother is making it fun for kids to spy on everyone
Image credit: Commercialfreechildhood
Updated 12/9:
Eavesdropping Barbie voted worst toy of the year!
Hello Barbie dolls can be hacked to reveal which house the doll belongs to, allowing someone to breach the Wi-Fi network and retrieve any recorded information.
VTech toys equipped with "Learning Lodge" have been hacked, they contained photos of children and family members and much more...
"The hacked data includes names, email addresses, passwords, and home addresses of 4,833,678 parents who have bought products sold by VTech. The dump also includes the first names, genders and birthdays of more than 200,000 kids. What’s worse, it’s possible to link the children to their parents, exposing the kids’ full identities and where they live..."
Bluebox Labs has published a report uncovering that the toy's smartphone app is not only vulnerable to hackers intercepting communications as they are sent up to its internet servers, but also that those servers were vulnerable to the POODLE attack.
"My Friend Cayla" is another Bluetooth connected toy that spies on family members:
Google/NSA developing kid's toys equipped with cameras and microphones
Image:US patentoffice
Google's patent describes toys that are equipped with microphones, speakers, cameras and a Wi-Fi connection.
These 'toys' are always on, listening for a trigger word.
"The toys use a trigger word which causes them to wake up and turn their gaze towards the person addressing them, they also check if the person talking is making eye contact.The patent adds, that making the device look cute should encourage even the youngest members of a family to interact with it. Young children might find these forms to be attractive." (Click here, here & here to read about Google's close working relationship with the NSA.)
According to Hello Barbie's Privacy FAQ private corporations are recording personal information.
"The use of Hello Barbie involves her interacting with users, and audio recordings of such interactions may be captured when Hello Barbie is used. In addition to the recordings themselves, it is possible for children to provide personal information when they talk with Hello Barbie, and such information may be captured in these recordings."
Hello Barbie is equipped with speech recognition and archives every session, which 'parents' (not law enforcement wink, wink) can access to spy on their kid's conversations.
"Hello Barbie includes enabling speech recognition (so we can provide meaningful responses to what you and your children say) and archiving play sessions of children for their parents to access. Hello Barbie may share certain transcripts of recordings with Mattel, which will be used solely for the purpose of enabling Mattel to assist us in improving the scripting of Hello Barbie.We share audio recordings with third party vendors who assist us with speech recognition."
2015's latest spy toy: A jumping race drone by Parrot, wants you to spy on everyone: "Record Your Advenures As You Go." Click here to watch the video.
On behalf of apathetic Americans everywhere, please support the American Police State on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and purchase these surveillance toys for your kids. Because, you never know if one of your relatives is a terrorist.