Smart sex toy app secretly recorded audio

An application by Lovense, maker of ‘smart’ sex toys, turned out to record sound without the user’s permission. A user discovered that sound recordings were made while using the app. The company said it was a minor bug.

A user of the Lovense application reported the discovery of audio files on Reddit. After using the application, it turned out that an audio file called tempSoundPlay.3gp had been created, containing sound recordings of a total of six minutes. It is true that the application has permission to use the microphone, but this is only intended for recording audio clips for the built-in chat function; therefore, it appears that the software secretly makes sound recordings while in use.

A Reddit user who claims to work for Lovense calls sound recording a minor bug, which would also affect only the Android version of the application; iOS users wouldn’t be bothered by anything. It’s not made clear how the recording of audio files got into the software, but Lovense calls it a cache file and no data would be sent to the company’s servers. A researcher who looked at the software subsequently confirmed this.

A new version of the Lovense application has now been released in which sound recordings are no longer made. The new version also removes the tempSoundPlay.3gp file, if present on the smartphone.