Gear Up On IoT: Hackers Hit The Police + Get Goosebumps With New VR App

Five IoT news bites to start your Friday.

Hackers, reportedly based in the UK, broke into digital files of US-based The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Thursday. Details, such as police officers' names and addresses, were linked online along with posts from FOP forums criticizing President Obama, among others. An anonymous source named Cthulhu, uploaded the files but claimed not to be one of the original hackers. FOP's own site was still down as of Friday morning.

Telefonica's latest report addresses just this issue: lack of protection around cyber crime. The Spanish broadband firm says rapid growth of the Internet of Things is happening without thought to security needs. Yet connected devices, and data, need to be protected against threats and theft.

Irish regulators want to know exactly what insurers are doing with data they collect from car tracking devices called telematics boxes. (These store information on how a car is driven, then sourced, in accident claim reports.) Personal data  — used in a way consumers don't understand nor agree with — is not going to fly with the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commission. The group intends to audit a number of insurers this year.

Not familiar with R.L. Stine and his wildly popular Goosebumps book series? Your kids are. And now there's a VR app tied to last year's movie of the same name, released by Sony. Viewers with Google Cardboard can take a wild ride with actor Jack Black (who plays Stine in the movie) as he tries to escape monsters from his stories. Studios, like Sony, are increasingly adopting VR to market films with VR experiences tied to the titles.

Finally, as more devices integrate touch sensors (think smartphones to tablets) the market for this tech is expected to grow 9 percent and more by 2020, says ReportsnReports. The majority of touch sensors today appear in smartphones.