A mother was horrified to discover that her children’s bedroom monitors had allegedly been hacked by complete strangers who talked to her son at night.
Kurin Adele, a mother with more than 335,000 followers on TikTok, claimed her family’s Owlet baby monitors were compromised, resulting in a “terrifying” situation involving her young son.
“I’ve noticed that for the last two weeks or a couple of months, he’s been turning off his camera,” she said of her son in a viral clip that garnered 6.2 million views.
When she said she turned to her husband and asked him to plug it back in, her son began to cry.
“It’s like, ‘I don’t want my camera plugged in, I don’t want my camera plugged in,’” he recalled. “’Someone talks to me at night and scares me. Someone wakes me up and talks to me and I’m scared, I don’t want my camera plugged in.’”
But Adele said she and her husband don’t talk to their children through the Owlet monitors, which use Wi-Fi.
She claimed the only reason they weren’t aware of the hack was because her son thought it was them talking to him through the monitor.
When the couple went to change their password online, they received a notification that their login credentials had turned up in a data leak, potentially compromising their account.
“Who the hell knows how long someone has had our password and been playing with my son,” he said before stating, “Owlet never notified us.”
The incident prompted them to “run to Target” to buy a new camera, one that doesn’t need Wi-Fi.
“If you can, get rid of your Wi-Fi cameras because there have been data breaches, data leaks, and people are hacking baby monitors left and right, just to mess with people,” Adele urged her viewers. “And it’s terrifying.”
In a post clip with 44,000 views that was posted on Monday, Adele gave her followers a much-anticipated update this week.
She claimed that Owlet’s response was “dismissive” until the company stumbled upon her viral video.
“I’m a little bummed because I know the only reason they contact me is because I have a platform and my video went viral,” she admitted, adding that she looks forward to seeing how Owlet fixes the problem.
However, in a statement provided to The Post, Owlet said he “takes customer safety and security very seriously” and confirmed that he has been in contact with Adele while conducting an investigation.
“Our team has reviewed all available data from us, including firmware, mobile device, and server logs, and we are very confident that there was no suspicious activity,” a company statement read.
“All access to the client’s cameras came from the family-owned devices, and we have no reason to believe that there was improper access by external IP addresses based on our review,” the statement continued. “In addition, Owlet has no confirmed cases of our cameras being compromised, nor have we identified any flaws in our security protocols.”
Owlet said it does not store customer passwords, but would inform customers “immediately” in the event of a data breach.
The company urged customers to “be vigilant and use password best practices with all devices,” such as not reusing the same or similar credentials across multiple accounts.
“We encourage users to change their passwords regularly, and if you receive a pop-up from iOS or Android about a possible data leak, please change your password(s) immediately,” the statement concluded.
In comments to both Adele clips, horrified viewers expressed their horror.
One user said they were “about to buy 2 of her cameras” but after hearing about Adele’s experience, they are “unsure” and “don’t really feel safe.”
“I haven’t plugged mine back in since I watched your video. Too worried! another viewer wrote.
“This same thing happened with our owlet camera. I was passing by my son’s room and I heard someone say to him: ‘calm down, friend… it’s okay’”, said another.
“This same situation happened to us and our little owl went straight to the trash. I immediately switched to child optics,” someone else chimed in.
“We never use a Wi-Fi monitor for this reason! So scary!” one person wrote.
Many users advised against using Wi-Fi monitors due to how hackable they can be.
According to CNET, hackers can infiltrate home cameras through Wi-Fi network or leaked credentials online.
Norton reported last year that infected routers comprise 75% of attacks on IoT devices, objects that are connected to the Internet, also known as the Internet of Things.
Cameras connected to those routers, according to Norton, accounted for 15% of IoT attacks.
But Adele’s family isn’t the only one affected by the hackable cameras.
Home cameras, like Rings, have allegedly been hacked in years past; a family using a Nest camera allegedly overheard a prankster threatening to kidnap their baby.
In 2021, a concerned father claimed that his Owlet monitor had also been hacked, just like Adele’s.
“I just found out that our baby monitor has been hacked. We use the owl monitor,” wrote an anonymous Redditor on a new parent forum.
They reportedly discovered that someone was watching because of a red light flashing on the monitor, which they had placed over their baby’s bassinet.
“I was in the room, so I wasn’t using it. I called my husband and asked if he was seeing it and no. I opened and closed that app too and it was still on! they wrote. “I have no idea how long this has been going on. I’m super scared about it.
“Who knows if they’ve been talking to my little one too,” they added, saying they “hate this so much.”