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FTC urged to probe easily penetrated telly-enabled teledildonic toy

Woes whack Wi-Fi webcam willy with weak websec walls

The US Federal Trade Commission has been urged to launch a probe into a hackable sex toy, which is potentially exposing couples' teledildonic frolics to cyberpervs.

Earlier this month, the Siime Eye vibrator was discovered to utilise hard-coded credentials making it "trivial" for attackers to gain unauthorised access to the toy's webcam feed.

These inadequacies have led Access Now, an international internet rights group, to complain that the sale of the toy is unacceptable and constitutes unfair and deceptive trade practices.

Amie Stepanovich, the US policy manager at Access Now, said that the FTC "must send a clear message to the adult Internet of Things industry that bad security will not be tolerated. These devices can give access to people's most private information and they are being put on the market with laughably weak security settings."

Access Now urged the FTC to investigate the $249 sex toy, stating such an investigation was "even more important given the growing trend to provide internet connectivity for sex toys and other related products without proper thought given to digital security problems."

The complaint follows another teledildonics company settling a privacy infringement lawsuit for $3.75m back in March. Standard Innovation's internet-enabled sex toy was bashed for collecting user data, including the date, time, and duration of each session in which the toy was used.

In that instance, two settlement funds were to be established: a $3m pot for users of the app affected by its data-slurping activities, and $750,000 for purchasers of the toy itself. ®

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