An eight-year-old girl has been left terrified after a hacker took over her bedroom camera and told her he was Santa before asking: "Don't you want to be my best friend?"
The girl's family, from Desoto County in Tennessee, was also left frightened when they realised the camera - which is used for them to keep an eye on their children - had been tapped into.
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According to the Mirror, the LeMay family installed a Ring camera in little Alyssa's room just four days before it was hacked.
On the camera recording, Alyssa can be heard asking: "Who is that?" Before the bloke replies: "I'm your best friend." She shouts for her mum and the man adds: "I'm Santa Claus. Don't you want to be my best friend?"
The little girl is then taunted with strange music before the man tells her: "You can mess up your room. You can break your TV. You can do whatever you want."
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Speaking to WMC5, Alyssa said: "I was in the hallway and thought it was my sister because I hear music. It's like 'tiptoe through the window.' So I come upstairs and I hear some banging noise and I am like 'who is that'."
Alyssa's mum Ashley LeMay,added: "They could have watched them sleeping, changing. I mean they could have seen all kinds of things. Honestly, my gut it makes me feel like it's either somebody who knows us or somebody who is very close by."
The camera was disconnected immediately and they have been in touch with Ring about what happened.
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In a statement, a Ring spokesperson told the Mirror: "Customer trust is important to us and we take the security of our devices seriously.
"While we are still investigating this issue and are taking appropriate steps to protect our devices based on our investigation, we are able to confirm this incident is in no way related to a breach or compromise of Ring's security."
The girl's mum has admitted that she didn't set up the two-factor authentication for the account - something which leaves it susceptible to hackers.
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The Ring spokesperson added: "Due to the fact that customers often use the same username and password for their various accounts and subscriptions, bad actors often re-use credentials stolen or leaked from one service on other services.
"As a precaution, we highly and openly encourage all Ring users to enable two-factor authentication on their Ring account, add Shared Users (instead of sharing login credentials), use strong passwords, and regularly change their passwords."
Featured Image Credit: NBC