Apparently CloudPets, internet-connected plush animals that parents can leave talking messages to their kids on, are hackable, and can release sensitive information. Who knew?
Normally I’d just give a note here for threadshitting (and this IS just a note), but consider this a very strong note. As in, “I almost decided to make this a warning” note. Amateur Barbarian, you not only have been here long enough to know better not to make comments like this in threads if you don’t care anything about them, but you have enough warnings to where I know this isn’t just a one off type of thing with you.
Do NOT threadshit again or you will start being warned for even something as (usually) small as it.
If parents are storing their bank passwords on these toys, there’s something really bizarre going on.
I suppose there might be a little concern if hackers could get into the CloudPets and leave their own messages, so that little Joey hears a stuffed animal saying “Kill your parents! KILL!!!”
*reminiscent of the hackable in-home security camera freakout of a few years ago, when hackerturds actually were using the cameras’ audio to murmur nasty things to the kiddies.
Did this fellow get into a database, or the actual devices? Getting onto a home network seems worse to me that reading a child’s messages. What a way to deliver a ransom note! “I’m Talky Tina, and if you ever want to see Sally again…”
That was in no way intended as a threadshit. It’s an acerbic nod to dozens of similar threads, some mine and some I’ve participated in, about the endless sweeping for data we are subjected to these days, with questionable controls and and for questionable purposes. In every one of those threads is a sub-thread of those who argue every point with “Well, I don’t care if they track everything I do” either because they perceive it as a benefit (“Goody, the store will always have my brand of peanut butter!”) or the spectacularly brainless “I don’t have anything to hide.”
Cal posted an excellent and frightening link that shows just how pervasive this kind of embedded tracking has become, no matter how benign its nominal end and purpose, and even more so reinforces my repeated point that while the collector (grocery store, Google, PAC) might be utterly benign, the data is forever and can be misused in many ways about which those under surveillance should damned well care - for themselves, and for us as a society.
So I could have phrased that many way, but I doubt a single one of the Dopers who wave off corprorate/marketing surveillance and tracking missed the point, and it’s to them it was written.
Yes, i can shoot off shitty, ill-thought remarks. This was not one of them, and I thank Cal for the post.
I expected the discussion to continue; that was a gauntlet thrown down to the “who cares” crowd. Assuming I’m not suspended, I do have more to say on this specific topic.
Be that as it may, the note stands, because it came off as I said it did. If you have anything further you want to discuss about it, though, make a thread in ATMB and I will talk with you about it there and consider what you’re saying. Do not make another post about it in this thread, however, please, because it’s hijacking the thread.
I guess the parents’ CloudPet logins and passwords were exposed, so if they used the same login and password for their bank accounts, there might be a problem. Or maybe if their bank uses a voice authentication system, then they have a sample of the parents’ voices.
