If your baby monitor is connected to the internet, it may be vulnerable to opportunistic hackers who can watch or even talk to your child.
This is what happen to the worried parents of a 3-year-old boy, Sarah, and Jay after their son told them that a man has been talking to him at night.
And after investigating, the parents were shocked by what they discovered.
The wake-up call came quite literally when a hacker spoke to their 3-year-old son through his baby monitor, saying, “Wake up little boy, daddy’s looking for you.”
Then they heard the hacker’s voice and noticed the baby monitor’s camera following their movements. It’s only one case in a growing list of baby monitor hacking incidents.
According to Opposing Views, the parents quickly contacted the baby monitor company and asked what was going on. The company told them that it was possible a third party could have hacked into the monitor. The hacker could have the ability to control the camera from his phone or computer, but there was no way to track down who was responsible or where that person might be located.
In another incident in Texas, the parents of a 2-year-old girl heard a hacker’s voice through her baby monitor, calling their daughter “a moron” and other disturbing insults.
And in an Indiana case, a mother heard the Police song “Every Breath You Take” playing from her daughter’s baby monitor, followed by “sexual noises.”
Online predators know that people have baby monitors that can be connected to home Wi-Fi networks and accessed through web portals.
According to Vikas Bhatia, who is the chief executive officer of the cybersecurity firm Kalki Consulting, understands the real risk is that baby monitors with Wi-Fi can be hacked from virtually anywhere in the world.
Bhatia, who happens to be a father, was shopping for a baby monitor for his little one, he didn’t want any of those extra capabilities — and especially not Wi-Fi..
“The first question I would ask anyone who is buying a Wi-Fi enabled baby monitor is, ‘Do you specifically want to be able to access this monitor from outside the house?’… Most of the time, I hear, ‘No,'” Bhatia said.
Hackers tend to be opportunistic, explained Bhatia, who has more than 16 years of experience in the cybersecurity field.
Sources: OpposingViews, Huffington Post