MLS bug exposes customer data

A glitch in a Boston-area multiple listing service’s new Web-based platform has left some 200,000 consumers’ contact information and home search criteria viewable to anyone who has a broker-level password to access the system, Inman News has learned.

Jeffrey Bastress, broker/owner of Sterling, Mass.-based Back Roads Real Estate, winced when he realized how easily broker members can view all the client contact information that other brokers and agents have stored in the contact management function of H3, a system that MLS Property Information Network, a broker-owned MLS in greater Boston, launched in March.