Why buyers can’t access Auto Trader

CAR buyers around the world have been unable to access the Auto Trader site since it was attacked on April 18.

AutoTrader.co.uk suffered a ‘third party attack’ which resulted in the site being prevented from operating normally.

Angry traders have flooded our website with comments slating the way it has been handled. And weeks after the attack we were still receiving messages from dealers across the world who use the site to buy stock moaning that it was still unavailable for them.

Dealers from as far afield as New Zealand and the Caribbean were experiencing problems, and our coverage has consistently been the most heavily viewed on our site with hits from across the globe.

We contacted Auto Trader for a response and it issued the following statement: ‘All services were up and running on AutoTrader.co.uk from April 19 following the incident on April 18.

‘Initially it was necessary for us to implement a blanket ban on all non-UK traffic to ensure business as usual for the majority of our users. Over the course of the week we progressively brought online the more significant overseas locations that our site is used from – predominantly Europe and North America.

‘We have continued to open the site up to more overseas traffic since then and we hope to have full global access restored to the site by the weekend.

‘We value our non-UK based customers as well as our UK customer base and are working to restore service on a global basis as quickly as possible.

‘However, international access may be blocked again if we receive further malicious activity from countries outside the UK.’

It’s not the first time Autotrader.co.uk has been the subject of malicious attacks. In September of last year, we reported that dealers using the site were receiving ‘phishing’ emails from conmen. Dealers were emailed saying they had received an offer for one of their cars and asked to log in to the site. The conmen would then harvest dealers’ account details.

But, in this latest round of attacks, Autotrader.co.uk was adamant that there was no evidence of customer data being lost. The news overshadowed Auto Trader’s other announcement that the site now receives more than one billion page impressions a month.