'WAKE UP, YOU LITTLE...' Dads Wakes To Hear A Man Talking To His Little Girl Through Her Internet-Connected Baby Monitor

There is a new trend in technology called "the Internet of things."

All your household electronics and appliances are getting connected to the Internet - everything from your lights to your thermostats.

In the long run, connecting these things to the Internet will provide all sorts of conveniences and efficiencies.

But there is a dark side to the Internet of Things.

Forbes, for example, just published a story by Kashmir Hill about a man named Marc Gilbert who woke up on the night of his 34th birthday to hear a sound coming from his 2-year-old daughter's bed room.

Gilbert says he heard a man saying to his daughter: "Wake up, you little slut."

Awful.

The voice was coming through her Internet-connected baby monitor.

Hill says the hacker probably found the baby monitor through a search engine called Shodan, which indexes the "Internet of Things" the way Google indexes the regular Internet.

Shodan can find all kinds of stuff: webcams, traffic lights, glucose meters.

Scary.

Hill says the key to protecting yourself against invasions like the one Gilbert went through is to never buy a Internet-connected gadget that is not password protected. Also, if you buy one that comes with a default password and user name, change it immediately.