A global sex toy company has apologised to customers after they were accused of recording people who were using their remote control vibrators.
Lovense Remote were reportedly storing audio files that contained the sex sounds of users during sessions with the ‘Lush’ bluetooth vibrator.
But the Hong-Kong-based creators have now publicly acknowledged the fault and said it was just a “minor bug” and will be fixed simply by upgrading to the latest version of the app.
The company told HuffPost UK: “When we heard of the issue, fixing the bug became our first priority- it has been fixed and the new version of the app was available for download within five hours.”
The Verge first came across a Reddit user who had found a six-minute audio file of themselves stored in the app’s local folder on their smartphone.
Tydoctor said: “I was going through my phone media to prepare it for a factory reset and came across a... file named “tempSoundPlay.3gp,”
They say they had given the app permission to use the microphone and camera while they were using the in-app chat functionality. But they had not explicitly agreed that it could make a constant recording whenever the vibrator was turned on.
And this wasn’t a one case incident either, as other users confirmed to The Verge they had a similar experience.
A Reddit user, who has since been verified as an official spokesperson for the company, responded to the claims saying: “Regarding the sound file in question, it has already been confirmed that this is a minor bug - a temporary file that is created when someone uses the Sound Control feature.
“Your concern is completely understandable. But rest assured, no information or data is sent to our servers. This cache file currently remains on you phone instead of deleting itself once your session is finished. Also, when the file is created it overwrites itself (no new files are created).”
Programmers confirmed the bug was present on android and were in the process of testing on iOS.
They were working on an update, which was released on 10 November, that will automatically delete the file after users stop using the sound function.
The ‘Lush’ vibrator claims to have the longest control range out of all wearable bluetooth vibrators on the market, and has a wireless WIFI functionality that means it can be controlled “at any distance”.
HuffPost UK has contacted ‘Lovense Remote’ for a comment and will update this article with a response when it is received.