In recent years, children's smart watches with diverse functions, convenience and speed as the selling point are popular with parents and children, children feel that such watches are both fun and good-looking, and parents are interested in its real-time positioning, accurate search, video calls and other functions, which can be called "seeing baby artifacts". So, is it really safe to wear this children's smartwatch? Let's take a look.
This is a low-grade children's smart watch exposed at the CCTV 3.15 evening party this year, this watch has a huge security risk, and even become a "walking voyeuristic artifact", and some malicious programs can easily enter the watch.
Testers:
We can collect his (child's) location information many times to infer that the home he lives in is actually very close to his school, about 200 to 300 meters or so, and can be reached in 5 minutes.
As a wearable mobile terminal, children's smart watches have developed rapidly in China, with domestic sales exceeding 50 million in 2020 alone. In addition to some well-known brands, new faces are constantly emerging, including some copycat products.
However, for such products, parents said that the first concern is the safety of safety.
Parents:
The security of the address book, as well as recording devices and camera devices, these are the same as the usual mobile phone functions.
Searching on multiple e-commerce platforms found that there are many types of children's smart watches, and the price difference is also very large, and some even more than ten yuan can be shipped. Evaluator He Yanzhe said that such a low price can be free of delivery of electronic watches, in fact, behind it is to induce the public to go to the Internet to recharge.
He Yanzhe, Deputy Director of the Evaluation Laboratory of the Cyber Security Center of China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute:
9.9 yuan free shipping electronic watch, the more it sells the more you lose, it is actually a card behind it, this card is the need to recharge, because it needs to be connected to the Network.
In addition, on the e-commerce platform, children's smart watches are marked by merchants with slogans such as "accurate positioning, 4G communication, waterproofing", while watches priced at more than ten yuan to dozens of yuan do not even have the "3C" logo.
In the China Electronic Technology Standardization Institute, technical experts showed reporters several children's smart watches that have been evaluated, the most expensive of these watches does not exceed 300 yuan, the common problem is that the operation version is low, some low-cost children's smart watches use the early low version of the Android system, after the installation of various App software, without user authorization, you can take away the positioning, address book, microphone, camera and other sensitive permissions, which means that they can easily obtain the child's location, face image, Private information such as recordings.
According to experts, the low version of the operating system is the direct cause of the security risk of children's smart watches, but the root cause is that the manufacturer has not invested too much in security, resulting in possible risk vulnerabilities. In addition to the quality and system problems of the product itself, criminals will also use children's curiosity to induce them to scan the code to download some information-stealing software or viruses.
In addition, the current supervision of children's smart watches is relatively loose and has not really been included in the focus of supervision. From the technical principle, many of the standard requirements of the mobile phone terminal are completely applicable to the smart terminal, and supervision should be strengthened, and experts recommend that consumers try to choose a large brand with security when purchasing.
Senior ExperimentalIst of Beijing Information Science and Technology University - Wang Yafei:
Because children belong to a special group, so for the special group of children, it is necessary to formulate corresponding (technical) standards that meet the physical and mental health of children, so as to ensure the safety of children's watches and ensure the healthy development of this market.
How to choose the right smart watch?
1. Investigate the brand. Before buying children's smart watches, parents need to have a certain understanding of relevant brands and try to choose enterprise products with intellectual property rights and independent research and development teams. At present, there are many products in the children's smart watch market, and it is recommended that you buy the products of large brands and manufacturers to ensure the data security of smart watches.
Second, regular maintenance. Regular technology companies will generally regularly detect vulnerabilities and upgrade the system according to technological developments, parents should pay attention to the official update information of the product in time, and usually do a good job in the regular maintenance of children's smart watches.
3. Change the password. In daily use, parents should also improve their safety awareness and change the login password of children's smart watches from time to time.