The world encountered yet another messy security breach this week, with hacked children’s toy company VTech, based in Hong Kong.

Customers were e-mailed by the Vtech’s president, King Pang, to say that the app was back online after a hacker broke into the service in November - but they decided to hide the important stuff for its Terms & Conditions, instead avoiding any responsibility for future hacks and putting the blame on its own customers.

At Your Own Risk

The T&Cs now (rather ominously) <a href=https://www.vtech.com/en/press_release/2016/faq-about-cyber-attack-on-vtech-learning-lodge/>read</a>:

“You acknowledge and agree that any information you send or receive during your use of the site may not be secure and may be intercepted or later acquired by unauthorized parties.”

Company at Fault

No company can promise absolute safety when it comes to personal data - after all, we’ve seen this before with Sony and TalkTalk. But if you’re an IoT company that feels your customers should absolve all the risk for trusting in your shoddy product, perhaps you’re in the wrong industry.

We keep seeing these problems time and time again - and every time, we get a little further away from what the Internet of Things is supposed to be. Why are we putting all our trust in the cloud where everything can be done locally?

Photo courtesy of Fox