Auction site Wheedle, which shut down indefinitely on Tuesday, has sent the following email to members.
It claims a security glitch that allowed one member to change another member's reserve and buy-now pricing was the result of a Monday night performance upgrade gone wrong.
It also promises an independent review before the site comes back online.
RAW DATA: Email from Wheedle general manager Carl Rees to members, Wed Oct 3:
Dear Wheedle Member,
I made a decision yesterday morning to take Wheedle offline.
On Monday night our tech team made some tweaks and changes to the website to improve its performance and speed. These changes were deployed to the website without first passing through our normal test protocols. We quickly discovered that the changes were causing problems with the auction listing prices. There was also some concern raised around password security and retrieval. Please rest assured that your password has been, at all times, strongly encrypted and stored in our database. We are also exploring alternative ways to further increase password security.
In light of these events, we are undertaking a complete review of the website including engaging an independent firm to carry out a full a check of the security of the website.
We experienced a very positive interest in Wheedle and we had an astounding member uptake. We will be back soon, better, stronger and safer.
I apologise for any inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your support.
NBR staff
Thu, 04 Oct 2012
Thu, 04 Oct 2012
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