Can take pictures, locate, and make phone calls... In recent years, children's smart watches have been favored by more and more underage students.
During the summer vacation, children's smart watches of major brands have once again entered the sales peak.
However, the fast-growing market of children's smartwatches has frequently been chaotic.
Issues such as information leakage and financial risks brought about by password-free payments are all potential threats to the safety of minors.
Smartwatches for kids are not just watches
"Touch your watch and add a friend!" Nowadays, this sentence has become a greeting for many children when they socialize.
In the past, children's watches could only provide some simple functions such as positioning and emergency communication.
Today, after years of iterative upgrades, children's smartwatches are novel and fashionable, with more and more powerful hardware configurations and functions.
Children's smart watches are no longer like traditional watches, but more like a "smart phone" that is worn on the wrist, integrating positioning, calling, socializing, entertainment, learning, shopping, photo search and other functions.
And because of the appearance of the watch, wearing a children's smart watch can often bypass the rule that "primary and middle school students are not allowed to bring mobile phones into the campus".
Therefore, children's smart watches are highly respected by primary and secondary school students.
Behind the booming development of the children's smart watch market, chaos is also growing.
The reporter's investigation found that there are hundreds of applications (Apps) that can be downloaded in some children's watches, many of which are game apps.
Downloading these various apps can easily lead to children being addicted to them, which not only delays learning, but also affects their eyesight.
Among them, once some apps are bound with mobile phone numbers, password-free payment is simultaneously opened.
Without parents' knowledge, children can make consumption at will, including shopping, opening VIP services on the platform, buying game skins, etc., which greatly affects the financial security of the family.
Public statistics show that in the past 10 years, the population of children under the age of 14 in my country has remained at around 250 million, and these people are potential users of children's smart watches.
With the release of the "three-child policy", the number of children under the age of 14 may further increase, and the potential users of children's smart watches are still increasing.
According to statistics from relevant institutions, in recent years, my country's children's watches have maintained rapid growth. In 2020, their sales volume has reached 29.9 million.
Information leakage greatly endangers user security
This year's CCTV "3.15" party exposed many information security loopholes in children's watches.
After installation, some apps in children's watches can obtain various sensitive permissions such as location, address book, microphone, camera, etc. without user authorization, so as to easily obtain personal privacy information such as the child's location, face image, and recording.
According to reports, the "3.15" Information Security Laboratory conducted a special test on a children's smartwatch with a sales record of "100,000+" on the e-commerce platform.
The tester disguised the download QR code of a malicious program as a lottery game. After the child scans the code through the watch, the malicious program can easily enter the watch.
Engineers can realize remote control of this watch, collecting location information, monitoring call records, peeping videos and other operations are easy.
The root cause of information leakage of children's smartwatches is that the operating system is too old.
The report pointed out that the watch uses the Android 4.4 operating system without any permission management requirements.
Due to the backwardness of the operating system, the system will give the app what permissions the app applies for, without giving any notice to the user.
Under this system, apps can obtain a variety of sensitive permissions without user authorization.
Watch manufacturers choose a lower version of the operating system is a measure to reduce costs and ignore safety, and bring endless risks to children.
Cheap children's watches are the "hardest hit area" for information security.
A reporter from Science and Technology Daily searched on an e-commerce platform and found that the prices of phone watches on sale range from 35 yuan to 3,600 yuan. There are not only big brands such as "Little Genius", "Huawei" and "360", but also many small brands. .
In addition, many children's smartwatches lack supervision and screening of apps, and users can easily search for pornographic, violent and other bad content.
Some platforms still have problems such as inducing consumption and pushing advertisements.
Solving the chaos should rely on heteronomy and self-discipline
In April this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation released the recommended national standard GB/T41411-2022 "Children's Watches".
The standard will be implemented on November 1 this year.
As the first national standard for children's watches, the standard covers key quality safety and performance indicators such as positioning performance, communication, electromagnetic radiation, and information security of children's watches, and proposes relevant evaluation and testing methods.
On July 18, the Central Network Information Office and other departments will organize a two-month special campaign, focusing on short video live broadcasts, social networking, learning apps, online games, e-commerce, and children's smart devices that are frequently used by minors. The platform focuses on solving the chaos of minors-related issues.
This activity strengthens the information content management of smart devices such as smart watches, smart speakers, tablet computers, and early education story machines specially designed for minors, and conducts in-depth investigations of voice, video, text, pictures, games and other scenarios to comprehensively clean up illegal and bad information.
Major General Ding, an industrial economic analyst and founder of Nail Technology, said in an interview with the media: "Security for children's smart hardware must be the foundation, including the security of the hardware itself and the security of content. On the one hand, manufacturers need to develop functions and realize commercialization. On the other hand, relevant national authorities can set detailed access standards in terms of security, especially the content review should be more stringent, so as to regulate the market of children's smart hardware. develop."
Children's watch manufacturing, sales and other related industries call for the summary and improvement of effective and operational specific measures and experience in the special action process, and to build a standardized, institutionalized, and long-term institutional mechanism.
For example, on the basis of strictly implementing the "Minor Protection Law" and other laws and regulations, the industry access standards are set for the safety of children's smart hardware, and the legal responsibilities of children's watch manufacturers and software developers as well as the supervision responsibilities of relevant departments are further clarified. The production, sales and use of children's watches will be included in normal supervision, and children will be provided with a clear and clear growth environment.