Baby Monitor Hacked: 4 Simple Steps to Prevent It

Baby Monitor Hacked: 4 Simple Steps to Prevent It

Two parents in Texas learned the hard way that baby monitors can get hacked. They heard a creepy voice calling out to their sleeping 2-year-old daughter.
The hacker cursed and said explicit things to the child, and even called her by her name. He also took control of the camera and could see into her room, reports CBS News.
The Texas parents didn't call the cops, and the hacker hasn't been located. But for parents who use baby monitors, there are some simple steps you can take to try to keep creepers at bay. For example:

• Set a wireless network password. If a password isn't set, anyone can join your wireless network. Cracking into webcams is similar to breaking into a website. If a password "is not set, or is weak, the website that is used to manage the device can be compromised," a security specialist told CBS News.
• Use WPA2. Use Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) to set up a password. WPA2 has strong encryption standards, making it more difficult for hackers to compromise. A WPA2 in conjunction with a good password is golden.
• Create a unique password. Think "QWERTY" is special? Well, it's not, and neither is "password" or "12345!" A strong password is long and contains numbers, upper-and-lower case letters, and $pec!@l ch@r@cter$.
• Change your password. Even a strong unique password can be compromised. Another important precaution to take is to change your password every so often. Changing a password every 90 days is pretty standard.

Calm Down, Parents
Take this incident as a teachable moment on using passwords, but don't get paranoid. Baby monitor hijacking is a rarity and happens on a "slim-to-none" basis, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
If your child is one of the very, very few to fall victim to a monitor hack and be harmed by it, only then should you call the police or speak to an attorney.
But for the rest of you, know that millions of monitors have been sold, in addition to webcams used as makeshift monitors. Yet they haven't been making headlines because no serious hacking danger accompanies using them.
This incident will certainly give fodder to newbie parents who take worrying about their babes to unprecedented heights -- can you even imagine the shot nerves of a technophobic new parent?! -- but you must resist the urge to overreact.

Source: findlaw.com

Reprinted with permission from RISMedia. ©2013. All rights reserved.