Listing portals face daily hacking attempts
Representatives of the three largest listing portals recently told us something that we had not heard before. These leaders said that one of the biggest challenges they face is that there are thousands of online “bot” attacks daily. In these attacks, hackers attempt to hijack the listing content of the sites and use it for their own purposes—which are not always to attract homebuyers.
Protect and Serve
We checked with a veteran industry consultant and found that, yes, this is a major problem for all three listing sites. Further, regardless of the millions of dollars spent by these firms on protection and security walls, it is nearly impossible to stop this practice entirely. Worse yet, if these firms have this kind of problem one can only wonder what kind of problem this is for hundreds if not thousands of websites with IDX feeds. Do they also have this problem? Are they aware this is happening? What may brokerage firms and MLSs be doing to prevent theft of this data?
Inaccurate Data
In a time when there is great angst about the misappropriation of listing data, this is one area that has not received much attention, at least not openly. It may be that a great deal of the data floating around emanates, not from the deliberate distribution of listing data or open theft of the same, but rather by hackers taking it from legitimate sites and sending it to whoever will pay the most.
Does anyone have any data on the true scope of how much of our listing data is stolen in this fashion versus the deliberate distribution of portals, MLSs and brokerage firms? If so, let us know in the comments section below.
This article appeared in REAL Trends Newsletter and is being reprinted with permission of REAL Trends, Copyright 2014.