A mom-of-three has described her terror after hearing a man's voice describe her six-month-old son as a "cute one" over a baby monitor.
Kiara, from Melbourne, Australia, said that she was woken up by the man's voice in the early hours of October 29 after putting her son Zicko to sleep.
The monitor was being used to watch Zicko, who was born prematurely and had only just begun to sleep in his own room a few weeks beforehand.
Related - This girl's bedroom monitor was also hacked by an unknown man:"My partner Daniel and I were sleeping, everything was quiet and dark," she told Kidspot.
"Then I heard it, a really deep man's voice that doesn’t belong to anyone that I know.
"I heard him say, 'Mmm… that's a cute one.'
"I was frozen. I was so scared. I reached over to my partner and squeezed his arm so he would wake up."
Kiara's partner, Daniel, thoroughly searched their home to ensure the noises weren't coming from an intruder, but he found nothing, and she was convinced that the noises had come from the app connected to the baby monitor on her phone.
The couple unplugged the monitor, and Kiara removed the app from her phone.
"I didn't want to think about all the disgusting things that they were thinking of looking at my baby," she said.
Kiara explained that she had looked at a number of baby monitors before deciding to buy the Mirabella model from the retailer Kmart.
The couple had taken all the necessary steps to ensure the security of the device, giving it strong passwords instead of using the default ones and ensuring that their WiFi system was secure too.
"I had heard of this stuff happening, but only in the movies," she said. "I thought it would never happen to me, that's why I was so shocked."
Kiara realized that she'd also heard unusual creaking noises coming from the monitor late at night, and she moved it to an adjacent wall in a bid to solve the problem in case it was being caused by a problem in her home, but it was to no avail.
Kiara returned the baby monitor to Kmart where she informed staff about the incident, but she has not heard back yet.
The mother has explained that if she decides to purchase another baby monitor, it will be a voice-only device because of the experience she has had with the camera.
As per the Sun, Mirabella told Kidspot that the baby monitors are produced to "international standards for a global market".
"The product has had excellent reviews, and to the best of its knowledge, the baby monitor is a secure device," it said.
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