Smart camera and baby monitor warning given by UK's cyber-defender

By ITS Education Asia

Chalkface always like to keep our readers informed on how modern technology impacts children, therefore we thought it important to share this article about child baby monitors recently published on the BBC website.

Smart cameras and baby monitors can be watched by criminals over the internet by default, security chiefs warn.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is advising people to tweak the settings after buying them.

Easy-to-guess default passwords might let a hacker secretly observe a home through connected devices, it said.

The NCSC's technical director, Dr Ian Levy, warned while the devices were "fantastic innovations", they were vulnerable to cyber-attackers.

The new guidance for owners of smart cameras suggests three steps:

• changing the default password, which is often an obvious word like "admin" or "00000" to an unguessable, unique one
• keeping the camera's software, sometimes called firmware, updated
• switching off features that let you check the cameras remotely, if you don't need or use it

All efforts need to be made to keep our children safe. We at the ChalkFace strongly recommend following the above advice.

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