Kids Digital Cameras Come Loaded with Computer Virus
Did your kids just get a camera for Christmas? If you picked up the Fisher-Price “Kid-Tough,” you might want to update your anti-virus software before you plug it in to print out their pictures.
One Minnesota family contacted their local TV news crew after powering up Dad’s laptop, and trying to upload their daughter’s fresh-minted pictures. No sooner had they pulled the kid’s eye views up, when dad Jeff Tapper says his antivirus software alerted him that there were two viruses on the camera.
In other words – not on his computer. News station WCCO put in calls to Fisher-Price only to be told the office is closed for the holidays, but the Tappers have found they’re not the first to have this problem. Other parents have put out the warning in reviews on Amazon, over at Consumer Reports and other spots around the Web.
It doesn’t seem to be a United States-specific problem, as parents around the world are making the reports, nor is there one specific virus to beware of as parents are reporting different warnings from their anti-virus software.
There’s no recall out yet, but is anyone surprised that these things were made in China?
Image: Amazon
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If people are all getting the same worm virus, they should read into it a little more. The issue isn’t the camera, but the computer. I used it on one computer with no problems. When I plugged it into another computer, I got the alert. Turns out that computer was already infected and I was alerted only when I plugged the camera in and the virus transferred itself to the camera.
We got this last year for christmas and it burned out the usb port on my Mac screen and crashed my external hd and iPhoto. Luckily I was able to use a recovery program to rebuild my hd but for a while I was deathly afraid I’d lost all the pics of my son’s home birth! I won’t let my son near the computer with his camera now. He just snaps pics and erases them.
Yeah I bought the same camera for my kid and I was able to download some pictures the first day from my MAC. The second time I went to download the MAC wouldn’t recognize it. So I plugged it in my PC laptop and my virus scanner detected trojan.win32 virus. I want to know how to send it back to fisher price! When will Fisher Price realize that they should go back to their roots and make quality tools built in the USA or Canada. Now all their toys seem to be made in China and don’t last.