Commercial PropertyNew Technologies Concentrate On Preventing Listings Piracy
The listings wars aren"t over yet. Some lead generation companies are grabbing agents" MLS listings that are posted online and marketing photos and using them to entice real estate consumers. The lead generation companies then sell the consumer lead back to the consumer.
The practice is called "scraping," and the industry is trying to scrap the opportunity for these companies to make money off of stolen listings.
Here are two new approaches that you"ll be hearing more about - NoScrape and Safeword.
"Scraping continues to be a problem for our members," says Mark Lesswing, NAR vice president and director of the NAR"s Center of Realtor Technology (CRT.) "Pirates attack real estate listings on the Internet and often create phantom sites that appear to be genuine. These sites are used to generate leads and other forms of business that defraud the public and misrepresent their identities.
The CRT has created a new software called NoScrape to deal with the problem.
"The NoScrape application employs advanced software technology to defeat attempts by unauthorized outsiders to scrape or steal inventory data and images from real estate listings sites. NoScrape is a form of "rendering," a technique used to defeat piracy, and is favored by online financial institutions, coupon and ticketing industries," Lesswing explains.
NoScrape, through its use of rendering, allows users to convey listing information to consumers, while protecting underlying property data from exposure to listing pirates. NoScrape prevents unauthorized copying by generating an image or copy of the data and sending the image to an Internet site. Because such images are much more difficult to copy by outside intruders, the original listing data are safeguarded, says the NAR. Operating on the user"s own Web server, NoScrape can create these protected images from Multiple Listing System data or from information stored in spreadsheets like Microsoft"s Excel. The system also can include a tamper-proof feature to identify listings and prove their true ownership or origin.
NoScrape has just been released in its beta version, and is intended primarily to serve real estate companies and MLSs, as well as real estate associations.
NAR intends to make NoScrape available to members at no charge. Members can obtain more information on NoScrape and download a free copy here or by contacting CRT at info@CRT.realtors.org.
On the MLS side, Clareity Consulting and Communications, an IT and security consulting firm to the real estate industry, has partnered with Secure Computing, a provider of global security solutions, to provide real estate professionals with "an easy-to-use and affordable user authentication system designed to protect sensitive MLS and real estate-related data."
For years, says Gregg Larson, president and CEO of Clariety, the real estate industry has been in serious need of improving its data protection standards. "Most MLSs and real estate companies continue to rely solely on a username-password mechanism, which is easily compromised due to the sharing of passwords and ease of hacking," says Larson. "This lax security mechanism has resulted in a national epidemic of unauthorized system access and data theft. Controlling access to the MLS -- as well as transaction management systems and broker systems -- is more critical than ever, since it is no longer just listing information at stake. MLS systems now include a host of contact management and CRM applications that store personal information about clients and prospects."
With the industry"s unique needs in mind, Clareity is now using Secure Computing"s SafeWord® strong authentication solutions to tailor its world-class security technologies to provide powerful and practical products for real estate professionals. The customized solutions will provide heightened security across a broad spectrum of real estate IT systems and will be specifically designed for mobile professionals. They will provide MLSs and real estate companies with heightened security while being easy to use and inexpensive.
"A strong authentication system for real estate professionals that is simple yet reliable is long overdue," said Gregg Larson, President and CEO of Clareity Consulting. "The username-password system now in use poses real threats to our industry and must be upgraded to the new and more effective standards used in other industries. In partnership with Secure Computing, Clareity can now help real estate organizations through the process of tailoring and implementing the right security solution for their MLS. This includes designing the right security solution for each MLS, planning the installation, system integration, staff training, and providing on-site assistance to guarantee a successful deployment."