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Ahead of 2017’s present buying season, UK consumer rights group Which? has warned parents about the risks of giving connected toys to their children, and called for devices with known security and/or privacy risks to be banned from sale on kids safety grounds.

Working with security researchers the group has spent the past 12 months investigating several popular Bluetooth or wi-fi toys that are on sale at major retailers, and says it found “concerning vulnerabilities” in several devices that could “enable anyone to effectively talk to a child through their toy”.

It’s published specific findings on four of the toys it looked at: Namely the Furby Connect; I-Que Intelligent Robot; Toy-fi Teddy; and CloudPets cuddly toy.

The latter toy drew major criticism from security experts in February when it was discovered that its maker had stored thousands of unencrypted voice recordings of kids and parents using the toy in a publicly accessible online database — with no authentication required to access the data. (Data was subsequently deleted and ransomed.)

read more at techcrunch.com