Agents' websites with log-in pages are 'vulnerable to attack'

A US technology company is warning that estate agency websites with log-in pages are “at risk of data theft, account takeover and fraud.”

San Francisco-based Distil Networks issues an annual ‘Bad Bot Report’ which suggests that worldwide some 96 per cent of websites which have areas protected by log-in pages are subject to anything from data-mining to outright fraud and data theft.

Distil’s report, which uses findings based on 2016 data collected from its global network, found that the websites that most attracted ‘bad bots’ were those with unique content and/or product and pricing information, as well as those with sign-up, log-in and account pages, and those which allowed payments.

Distil Network’s product marketing manager Peter Zavlaris says that agency sites often have many of those attributes. 

"Websites are absolutely irresistible to bad bots if they have logins, pricing information and or proprietary data, and payment processing" Zavlaris is quoted as telling the website Property Portal Watch. 

“Ninety-seven per cent of sites with pricing - like house listings - are scraped, 96 per cent of log-ins are attacked, and 90 per cent of sites have bad bots behind the login” he adds. 

Bots then not only lead to theft or fraud, but they end up slowing the load time of the sites they attack, making them less attractive to consumers. 

You can read the full piece here.