Children’s toy maker VTech Holdings Ltd. has agreed to pay $650,000 to settle a complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission related to the hacking and subsequent theft of data on its customers in 2015. The FTC alleged in its complaint that VTech, through its Kid Connect app that collected personal information from hundreds of ...

Amazon.com Inc. has opened a new front in its efforts to dominate the smart home assistant market: It has signed new deals with a range of manufacturers that will see Alexa preinstalled on Windows 10-powered personal computers. Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Monday, the deals see Amazon team up with HP Inc., ...

Encrypted-messaging startup Telegram Messenger LLC looks like it will be the latest company to jump on the initial coin offering bandwagon, according to a number of reports in recent days. Cryptovest broke the news first on Jan. 5, revealing both a teaser video and roadmap for Telegram’s ICO that will operate on a “third generation” ...

Troubled action camera maker GoPro Inc. is exiting the drone market as part of a broader restructure of the company as it struggles to grow sales in a highly competitive market. The news of GoPro’s exit from drones came via its fourth-quarter financial report out today. It noted that while the company saw increased sales of $340 ...

Blockchain-based mobile voting startup Voatz Inc. has raised $2.2 million in a seed round that was led by Medici Ventures, Overstock.com Inc.’s venture arm. Founded in 2014, Voatz offers a mobile election voting platform that uses smart biometric and real-time identification ID verification on top of a custom-built blockchain for security and irrefutability. The platform is pitched as ...

Hackers are already targeting the PyeongChang Winter Olympic games a month before they start, according to a newly published report. Security researchers at McAfee Inc. have found a campaign to target PyeongChang Olympics that began Dec. 22, with the most recent activity appearing Dec. 28. The campaign primary targeted the email account of icehockey@pyeongchang2018.com, but several ...

The New York Stock Exchange has more than doubled its ambitions to offer bitcoin-related securities with a new application to the Securities and Exchange Commission now seeking approval to list five exchange-traded funds. NYSE Acra, the exchange’s Chicago-based stocks and options market, applied for approval for two ETFs in December: the ProShares Bitcoin ETF and the ProShares Short ...

TCL Communication Technology Holding Ltd., the operator of the BlackBerry Mobile site, is the latest victim of cryptocurrency-loving hackers in the latest of a rash of cryptomining hijacking cases. The website for BlackBerry Mobile was discovered by a Reddit user last week to be serving up code to visitors from Coinhive, the notorious Monero mining script service. ...

Israeli startup Innoviz Technologies Inc. has commercially launched its first high-definition solid-state LiDAR product. The company today said its InnovizPro delivers superior performance at a significantly lower cost and smaller size than existing solutions through a platform designed for next-generation autonomous driving programs. Claimed to leapfrog other LiDAR systems in accuracy and reliability even in challenging environments such as ...

Ethereum broke through $1,000 for the first time in trading Thursday and Ripple XRP hit new highs as investor interest in alternative cryptocurrencies continues to grow in the new year. The surges came as 2017’s darling, bitcoin, continues to vacillate up and down. Ripple, which surpassed Ethereum to become the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization Dec. ...