8:19 pm, June 2, 2011
DEALERS are being warned after a number of garages have said their Auto Trader websites have been ‘hacked’.
Several dealers have been in touch with Car Dealer with tales of woe after their accounts with the online classified website were compromised.
One said the prices on their adverts were changed and the telephone number altered so customers were directed to the fraudsters instead.
The problems seem to extend to dealers’ own websites which are run on Auto Trader’s servers.
One independent dealer told us: ‘We have had our website hacked and 13 cars added at ridiculously low prices. The car pics had text over them saying “please email after 5pm” and gave the scammer’s email address.
‘We had lots of calls and after the first one I checked the internet. Typical 6.30pm on a Bank Holiday Monday and no one answered at Auto Trader. Why, oh why don’t they have a 24hr line for dealer emergencies? It could be a premium rate if needs be!’
The dealer asked if we had heard of anymore problems and unfortunately we have – over the last two weeks our inbox has been inundated with similar issues.
Another dealer told us: ‘It seems like Auto Trader may have been compromised again, or this is the knock on effect of the other hack.
‘Someone hacked our website and changed the prices of some of the cars to very cheap. There was a link for the customer to follow to enter bank details to pay for the car then a promise of delivery. Obviously the car doesn’t turn up.’
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This dealer told us he’d been advised to log-in to his account and change the passwords and said others with accounts and websites hosted by Auto Trader should do the same.
We contacted Auto Trader and asked if it knew whether its dealers’ websites had been hacked, but that question wasn’t answered directly.
However, Helena Fearon, customer security and compliance director at Trader Media Group, said: ‘Auto Trader takes customer security extremely seriously and we are committed to ensuring we offer our dealers the best information and software available to counter the threat of phishing attacks.
‘In order to protect our dealers’ accounts we have partnered with Trusteer to offer their Rapport product to all our dealers free of charge. Once downloaded this will secure the dealers connection with TMG and flag if they are diverted to a spoof site.
‘We regularly update the safety and security information on our website and urge all our dealers to download Trusteer Rapport to ensure they are protected against phishing attacks.’
If you’ve heard of similar problems or any other scams that affect dealers please get in touch – we’ll always investigate.
