Smart toys: Swiss researchers warn against collecting data in children’s rooms

2024-08-28 12:40:18

So-called smart toys apparently create behavioral profiles of children. Swiss researchers noticed this when they examined intelligent toys. They criticized the lack of data protection and transparency. Only a few parents know about data collection.

Children have fun with “Toniebox”: The colorful cube is easy to use and allows small children to switch to music and audio content at any time. All you have to do is insert the corresponding symbol and the corresponding story can be heard. This is child’s play, but Swiss researchers are now warning against such smart toys.

Toniebox, for example, records when it was activated by which number, when playback stopped and at what point it was reversed or fast forwarded. The device sends this data to the provider, and according to current Swiss research, security leaves something to be desired.

Toniebox is one of twelve intelligent toys developed by a team led by Isabel Wagner from Branch for mathematics and computer science at the University of Basel were examined. For yours Training In addition to Toniebox, researchers looked at the popular “Tiptoi” pencil, the “Edurino” learning tool and the “Tamagotchi” virtual pet. But unknown products like “Moorebot”, a mobile robot with a camera and microphone, or “Kidibuzz”, a smartphone for children with parental controls, were also included in the survey.

Among other things, it is checked whether the data report is encrypted – and what the transparency of the data collection is, i.e. whether the buyers are informed about it by the provider. Wagner and his colleagues will present the results in early September “Annual Secret Conference” introduced in Sweden. “The applications that come with some of these toys require unnecessary access rights, for example to the location or microphone of the smartphone,” said the cybersecurity expert as an example of what his team observed.

The researchers also criticized: Neither Toniebox nor Tiptoi-Stift secures data traffic. However, the toys will differ in terms of data protection: While the Tiptoi pen does not record how and when the child uses it, the Toniebox collects such data and sends it to the manufacturer. Even if Toniebox works offline and is temporarily connected to the Internet to download new audio content, the device can save the data received locally and send it to the provider at the next opportunity.

“In another toy that is currently being researched and which is integrated into ChatGPT, we noticed that the log data is often deleted,” Wagner said in a statement from his university. It is possible that the system is set to delete a local copy of the data that has been transferred to make better use of the internal storage space.

Better storage protection

The first author of the study, Julika Feldbusch, called for children’s privacy to be especially protected. And it recommends that compliance with safety and data protection standards is indicated by a label on the packaging, similar to nutritional information on food. Currently it is very difficult for parents to assess the safety risks of intelligent toys.

“We are already seeing signs of a two-tier society when it comes to protecting children,” Feldbusch was quoted as saying in a statement. “Well-informed parents deal with this and can choose toys that do not create behavioral profiles of their children.”

One can take the view that children are unlikely to suffer any negative consequences in individual cases if toy manufacturers create profiles of them, says Isabel Wagner. But we don’t know for sure: “Because comprehensive screening can, for example, have a negative impact on human development.”