‘This is a wake-up call for Hong Kong’: VTech data hack reveals cybersecurity not taken seriously by local businesses

Pundits urge local companies to step up their defences in wake of hacking of children’s learning products maker, one of the most scandalous corporate data breaches in the city in recent years.

Reading Time:2 minutes

Five million customer accounts, including the profiles of more than 200,000 children, were broken into from VTech’s Learning Lodge app store database on November 14, the company said. Photo: Reuters

Published: 8:00pm, 1 Dec 2015Updated: 4:53pm, 2 Dec 2015

A beguiling indifference to cybersecurity in Hong Kong may be to blame for the large-scale hacking of customers’ accounts at children’s learning products maker VTech, which marks the biggest and potentially most scandalous corporate data breach in the city since 2011.

In a swift response, Hong Kong’s privacy commissioner Stephen Wong Kai-yi said Tuesday an investigation has been launched to look into VTech’s system of collecting personal data and the safeguards used to protect that information.

He also warned people, especially children and teenagers in the city, to be wary of privacy breaches arising from websites and mobile apps that collect large quantities of personal data from them.

VTech said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing that about five million customer accounts, including the profiles of more than 200,000 children, were broken into from its Learning Lodge app store database on November 14. The company said it discovered the breach on Tuesday of last week.

The ransacked digital information included customers’ names, email addresses, passwords and download history, as well the names, gender and birth dates of children who used the Learning Lodge site to get apps, games and electronic books.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x