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Toy Maker VTech Shuts App Store After Customer Details Stolen In Massive Hack

Electronic toy maker VTech has temporarily shut down its app store following a hack in which the details of around 5 million customers were stolen.

The massive data breach affects the company’s Learning Lodge online store which offers downloads of apps, games and books for the Vtech’s high-tech toys.

The company makes a large variety of products, including iPad-style tablets aimed at kids.

According to a statement from the Hong Kong-based firm, an ‘unauthorised party’ accessed customer data on the Learning Lodge database on 14 November.

“Upon discovering the unauthorized access we immediately conducted a thorough investigation, which involved a comprehensive check of the affected site and implementation of measures to defend against any further attacks,” the statement explains.

While the affected database does not hold any credit card information, it does host other private customer details.

“Our customer database contains general user profile information including name, email address, encrypted password, secret question and answer for password retrieval, IP address, mailing address and download history”, says Vtech.

The company has vowed to stop the same thing from happening again in the future, saying: “We are committed to protecting our customer information and their privacy, to ensure against any such incidents in the future”.

Vtech has reportedly emailed all of its customers that use the Learning Lodge store to inform them of the data breach.

Image credit: VTech