Some smart toys may be spying on your kids' behaviour patterns in breach of privacy
Some of the smart toys studied by University of Basel, Switzerland
Did you know that some so-called 'smart toys' may be spying on your kids' behaviour patterns? A shocking study into 12 such toys found breaches of security and privacy, with the toys recording and transmitting userdata to toy manufacturers.
The study examined smart toys like Toniebox, Tiptoi smart pen,Edurino learning app, Tamagotchi virtual pet, Moorebot mobile robot and chlidren's smart phone Kidibuzz. These toys employ interactive play through software apps and internet.
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"Many of these toys raise privacy concerns, and some even collect extensive behavioral data about children," said the researchers at the University of Basel, Switzerland in a release.
Take the case of Toniebox in which children can use figurines that, when put into a box, would play music and audio content. The researchers found that the toy records exactly when the toy is activated and by which figurine, when the child stops playback, and to which spot they rewind or fast-forward, said the release.
Such data is sent to the manufacturer, found the study headed by Prof Isabel Wagner of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Basel.
For the study to be presented at the Annual Privacy Forum in September, the researchers looked into data traffic encryption, data protection, transparency and compliance with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation.
They found that Toniebox and the Tiptoi Pen do not securely encrypt data traffic.
Toniebox collects data and sends to the manufacturer."Even if the Toniebox were operated offline and only temporarily connected to the internet while downloading new audio content, the device could store collected data locally and transmit it to the manufacturer at the next opportunity," said Wagner, a professor of cyber security.
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In another toy that integrates ChatGPT, the researchers found that log data "regularly vanishes,” said Wagner, adding the system is probably set up to delete the local copy of transmitted data to optimise internal storage use.
The ChatGPT toy transmits a data stream that looks like audio. "Perhaps the company wants to optimise speech recognition for children’s voices," said Wagner.
While companies claim the data helps optimise the devices, it's not clear to users what purpose this data could serve.
“The apps bundled with some of these toys demand entirely unnecessary access rights, such as to a smartphone’s location or microphone,” said Wagner.
“Children’s privacy requires special protection,” said Julika Feldbusch, first author of the study.
She said toy manufacturers should place greater weight on privacy and security of their products.
“Well-informed parents engage with the issue and can choose toys that do not create behavioural profiles of their children. But many lack the technical knowledge or don’t have time to think about this stuff in detail,” Feldbusch.
(With inputs from agencies)
