As our devices grow more connected with every release, it also introduces a new problem in form of security and privacy. This problem has recently manifested itself again in a post on Reddit where user tydoctor discovered that a connected sex toy by Lovense kept a full audio recording of their intimate session.According to the post, “The lovense remote control vibrator app (used to control remote control sex toys made by lovense, such as this one) seems to be recording while the vibrator is on. I was going through my phone media to prepare it for a factory reset and came across a .3gp file named “tempSoundPlay.3gp” in the folder for the App. The file was a FULL audio recording 6 minutes long of the last time I had used the app to control my SO’s remote control vibrator (We used it at a bar while playing pool).”
A company representative has since responded to the post claiming that this was not intentional and that it was a minor bug that has since been fixed in the latest update. They also note that this only affects the Android version of the app and not the iOS version. The update will also delete the temporary audio file, and will do additional checks whenever the app is started, and delete the files if it is there.
Lovense’s privacy policy also asserts that they do not store any sensitive data on their servers. That being said, bugs do happen, although it does raise the question of the security and privacy of such devices. This is why we have seen other connected devices pulled from the market over privacy concerns.
Filed in . Read more about Connected Objects, IoT (Internet of Things), Privacy and Security.