Mom Claims Hackers Took Control Of Her Baby Monitor – Parental Warning!

Parents: Your Video Baby Monitoring System Could Be Putting Your Family At Risk

Experts say as the tech becomes more complicated it’s actually more susceptible to hackers seeking to gain access to your private information or just peek in on your family. In fact, a study conducted gave most monitors a failing grade in security.

According to Huffington Post, many modern baby monitors come with a long list of high-tech features, from wireless connectivity to motion sensors.

But when Vikas Bhatia was shopping for a baby monitor for his little one, he didn’t want any of those extra capabilities — and especially not Wi-Fi.

“I don’t trust it,” he told Healthline.

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.

He won’t take the chance that hackers could try to peep at his 3-month-old infant.

Parents may not be aware

Most new parents, however, aren’t aware of that risk — and some have found out the hard and terrifying way.

For a Washington family, 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.”

One South Carolina family experienced an equally terrifying situation when their monitor turned to face their bed. Something the mother says she witnessed at least twice. The second time, though, the young parents realized it wasn’t simply turned by one of them.

As Written On NPR:

When Jamie Summitt woke up one Wednesday morning and saw the baby video monitor pointed right at her, she wasn’t worried.

Yes, it had moved since the South Carolina stay-at-home mom fell asleep. But she assumed it was her husband, Kevin, checking in on her from work using the smartphone app that controls the camera.

That night, as the family ate dinner and the baby slept, her smartphone alerted her that the camera was being moved again.

“I looked over on my phone and saw that it was slowly panning over across the room to where our bed was and stopped,” Summitt tells NPR. It was pointing to the spot where she breastfed her son, Noah, several times a day. The camera paused on the empty bed, then moved back to the bassinet.

This time, everyone who uses the app was together — and they weren’t controlling the device. In fact, Kevin said he hadn’t touched the app all day, which made Jamie remember the incident that morning with unease.