Toy manufacturer VTech has suspended its app store after the company's server was hacked last month, exposing the private details of millions of its customers.
#VTechHack: 190GB worth of photos and chat logs stolen in cyber breach https://t.co/UNsVcnI4iu pic.twitter.com/hkY6VrFYfO
— V3 (@V3_co_uk) December 1, 2015
The company stated that "about 5 million customer accounts and related kids profiles worldwide" were affected, with the names, email addresses, passwords and home addresses of parents, along with the first names, genders and birthdays of more than 200,000 children accessed by hackers.
While the hack was damaging enough for the company, Vice reported that other forms of sensitive data was also left on VTech's servers, including the photos of many children using the company's products and the chat logs between children and their parents.
Hackers have since gained access to hundreds of thousands of head shot photos of many children using VTech's products, sparking outcry over the company's lapse in privacy and security.
In another major concern, the photos, chat logs and recordings stolen from the company's server can be traced back to specific usernames, meaning those in possession of the hacked material could potentially track down and identify the people using VTech's products.
In trying to limit the damage and ease the concern of clients, VTech released a statement saying that no financial or payment details had been stolen.
"It is important to note that our customer database does not contain any credit card information and VTech does not process nor store any customer credit card data on the Learning Lodge website."
The hack comes amid a number of high profile security breaches in recent times after UK mobile communications company TalkTalk has thousands of customer details stolen.
