Computer viruses are now as common as anything. Basically, if you haven’t ever been infected then you should count yourself very lucky. But while most of us contract viruses from visiting Web sites we have never heard of or opening email attachments we should have suspected as being dodgy, some unlucky people received Christmas presents loaded with viruses.

We’ve already heard about the Samsung digital picture frames which come complete with a virus-infected installation CD, and now we have reports that Fisher-Price kids cameras are also coming pre-installed with a couple of viruses, also free of charge. Which is nice.

According to reader report on Consumerist, the Kid-Tough Digital Camera by Fisher-Price, a bestseller this Christmas for children annoyed at having to ask to borrow their parents digital camera, is known to be affected. As soon as the camera is plugged in to a PC via the supplied USB cable, a virus is unleashed on the system.

Luckily, most people are now sensible enough to have some kind of virus protection software on their computer, meaning the virus transferred along with any taken pictures would be detected and quarantined. But there are some people who still lack the basic sense to do this, and those people could be in trouble thanks to what is essentially a Fisher-Price toy.

Unfortunately, the Fisher-Price Web site is sorely lacking information on how to return faulty products and doesn’t even have the capacity for a disgruntled customer to leave feedback. And it seems the Fisher-Price staff at head office have a nice long time off as they aren’t in the office until next week.

It’ll be interesting to hear what Fisher-Price has to say about all this because it’s shocking to my mind that a company can ship a product with a virus installed on it. I’d guess it’s happened in the manufacturing process but aren’t there checks made along the line to prevent this kind of thing?

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Entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 9:51 pm under Malware, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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