Toymaker Hack Highlights Dark Side of Tech Industry’s Data Obsession

The VTech data breach (discovered Nov 24, 2015) exposed roughly 5 million customer accounts and associated children’s records — including names, emails, hashed passwords, secret questions/answers, mailing/IP addresses, download history, and reportedly photos and voice recordings — due to an SQL injection vulnerability in its Learning Lodge service; the report highlights the scale of the leak, potential privacy/safety impacts for children, and industry/regulatory shortcomings around connected toys and data collection.