At one time, there was much chatter within the real estate professional community that Google could become the new dominant source for real estate listings with its Google Base Service.  This chatter spawned polarizing debates regarding the disintermediation of listings controlled by Multiple Listing Services (MLS).  While this debate makes for interesting conversation, this announcement from Google indicates they are removing themselves as a dominant player in the real estate listing space.

How does this affect softRealty.com?

softRealty.com provides two types of property search:

• MLS Based Property Search
• Google Base Property Search

While the MLS based Property Search will not be affected, softRealty.com’s Google Base Property Search will no longer be available on June 1, 2011.  We are currently reviewing options for providing an alternative to Google Base listings.  Such alternatives include reviewing integration with other listing services, as well as, expanding support to new MLS markets.

In the meantime, no interruption to the Google Base Property Search is expected until June 1, 2011.

See the links below for more information:

• Retiring real estate on Google Maps
• FAQ – Google  Base Data API (Deprecated)
• Google’s New Shopping API and Deprecation of the Base API

If you want your home page to be a page other than the one you see you will go to “settings” then “reading” from the left menu and choose “A Static Page” and then select what your “Front Page” should be.

You do not need to register your site to edit any of the content on your website. Once your site is ready we will provide you with the IP address that you will want to point your domain to.

Define Your Niche

• This can be whatever you want it to be – Cars, Poetry, Pets, Foreclosures, Local Community, and so on.
• Niche marketing simply means you’re marketing to a select group of people that all share a common interest

Establish Yourself as the Agent for that Niche

• Think of yourself as “The” Agent for [insert niche]

Write about the Niche, ideas you can include are…

• Community
• Events
• Holiday
• RE News
• Schools
• Goals

Specifically, this applies to YOU if you answer YES to ALL of the following:

1. You have a laptop, smart phone (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc), iPad, iTouch, etc with WiFi (wireless internet) capabilities.
2. You connect your device to public WiFi networks at locations such as Starbucks, airports, hotels, conference halls, libraries, restaurants, bookstores, schools, work – any public place.
3. The WiFi networks you connect to are unsecure – Meaning: They do NOT require WEP, WPA or WPA2 encryption settings.
   1. NOTE:
      1. Most public wireless networks are unsecure.
      2. Networks that require some sort of website login or payment to connect does not mean it is secure.
      3. You visit sites such as Facebook, Hotmail, webmail (Yahoo Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail, Charter, Comcast, ATT, etc), Amazon, Yelp, LinkedIn, Twitter, WordPress, and so many others from your phone or laptop while on the public WiFi network.

If you answered YES to all statements above, you are vulnerable to people having direct access to your online accounts from their computers.

The Problem:

A new program called Firesheep was created to demonstrate how vulnerable unsecure wireless networks are. The program intercepts unencrypted cookies from the wireless network for websites like those listed above in item #4. This means any random person could be hanging out at a place like Starbucks waiting for you to check your Facebook account or webmail and instantly have access to the accounts you visited. It’s scary how easy this was for me to do. It does not require any programming knowledge whatsoever.

What’s scary is Firesheep is FREE to anyone and was just released last month-October 2010. The Firesheep program is actually a plugin that runs in the Firefox web browser. Any middle school kid could set this up on their laptop within minutes and create massive havoc on unsuspecting people.

Depending on the compromised website, a random person could change your account password and permanently lock the owner out with the number of people who use public WiFi Hotspots to access email and many unsecure websites.

Although I haven’t heard much media press about this yet, this has the potential of being the worst security vulnerability I’ve ever seen to date.

Imagine the following scenario: A hacker intercepts some stranger’s Yahoo email account and changes the password. the hacker discovers the Yahoo account is the the primary email for a Bank of America account. If the hacker cannot locate the password, they may have enough information to request a password reset and wait for the email to arrive. At that time, they will change the password and gain full access to the bank account before the owner has any idea what’s going on. Granted, most banks have additional security measures in place to verify account ownership. However, the hacker is that much closer to breaking the system.

Some Protective Measures to Consider:

The best option is Not to use unsecure public WiFi Hotspots. The risk is too great. However, we live in a digital world where being connected is a way of life. therefore, I suggest other considerations for those who much stay connected:

1. Only use the internet data plan provided by your cell phone company: (EDGE/G3/G4) or a trusted excrypted WiFi network.
2. Only connect to public WiFi networks that have WPA2 encryption
3. If you have to connect to an unsecure wireless network, use a VPN connections to access the internet with full encryption.
   1. Note: this is not an option for most people.
4. Use a service like www.getcocoon.com if you don’t have a VPN option to work with.
5. Only visit sites that use SSL encryption as identified by the HTTPS URL prefix. Notice the (S) in HTTPS.
   1. Note: Some websites only use HTTPS for pages used for login or collecting credit card payment information. For other pages, some sites revert back to the unsecure pages using the HTTP URL prefix. These sites are vulnerable since Firesheep will intercept the cookie when switching from HTTPS to HTTP, giving the hacker access the logged in account session.

At this point, I would caution anyone using an unsecure public WiFi to NOT use them unless you have a VPN connection for encryption.

Test Results:

Testing this is pretty straight forward for those who want to try this. I had two computers. The first played the role of the hacker. The second played the role of the victim. I used only my personal accounts for testing purposes. Both computers were on the same wireless network with WEP, WPA, WPA2 disabled. Therefore, the wireless network was not encrypted.

During my testing, I was able to compromise the following accounts from the victim computer with 30 seconds of starting the wireless scan on the hacker computer:

• Yahoo Mail
• Gmail
• Hotmail
• Custom Install of Wordpress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Bit.ly
• Amazon

Note: I did not have Yahoo Mail open in any browsers. The scanner from the hacker demo computer was able to pick up my account automatically because the browser on my victim computer had the Yahoo toolbar installed. I was not aware that the toolbar was even there. In fact, I was logged into Facebook on the victim computer and did not click on any links. The scanner picked up my Facebook account from the hacker computer instantly. Many sites like Facebook and webmail make automatic checks for new messages or wall posts. Those automatic checks will send session information to and from the website which can be intercepted by Firesheep to recreate and simulate the “logged in” account on the hacker computer. After compromising my Facebook account in my test, I could access all my information without the username and password.

To see this in action or read more about the early reviews of Firesheep, see the links listed below.

Quick Overview Videos:

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUyrMVkRTlI

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psVODNtFOrM&NR

To Install Firesheep and Test:

- http://www.coolbuster.net/2010/10/how-to-install-firesheep.html

- Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2_fG_Gut1s

Other Suggestions for Protecting Yourself: (Not really full proof)

- http://www.coolbuster.net/2010/10/protect-yourself-from-firesheep.html

- http://www.coolbuster.net/2010/10/firesheep-hacks-facebook-twitter.html

FireFox Plugins for Protecting from FireSheep and the like:

- https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12714/

- Article Review: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/25/firesheep/

Google Chrome Plugin:

- https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/flcpelgcagfhfoegekianiofphddckof

Stay Safe,

David Carroll

As mentioned in a recent post “New Hardware Upgrades at softRealty.com,” softRealty.com is making some massive hardware upgrades in preparation for our new exciting new offerings, the recent growth in clients, and our new supported technologies. In the process of upgrading our data center network with a new gigabit switch, something went awry and performance started to suffer these past few days. It took our team a little while to track down the source. As a result, the response times on our web app experienced massive delays. After replacing the switch, our apps started performing extremely well.

Real Estate WordPress Platform

One reason our hardware upgrades are necessary is to provide better support for our upcoming Real Estate WordPress Platform. Our development team has been working around the clock to create this powerful new platform for real estate agents. We’re currently in the testing phase and will be releasing a beta version to our current community of subscribers. We keep adding a new features designed to help real estate agents dominate in their personal hyper local niche brand. Not only is this a platform designed to support beautifully, professionally, and functionally performing websites, it’s structured for search engine optimization. Setting up single property pages and integrating with social media are just a few other included features. The exciting thing is we’re just scratching the surface with the possibilities.

Blending Technology with Lead Conversion Training

Technology alone is not enough to be successful. Therefore, we are further refining our Lead Conversion Training Program to work closely with the functionality of this platform. This will allow us to provide a more consistent and effective training program for all members at all levels. As we complete these final steps, we’re also in the process of redesigning our company website to better organize all the training material, videos, and support documentation.

We’re combining the benefits of technology, training, and marketing to help you build a successful Lead Conversion Strategy for your business. Stay tuned for more details to be released soon.

David Carroll, Founder Dude (a.k.a. CEO)
softRealty.com Corporation

Updated Support Documentation

In preparation for our new upcoming offerings, the recent growth in clients, and our new supported technologies, it’s time for us to upgrade the hardware at our data centers. I’ll spare you the “Geek Speak” on what this means. However, I’ll just say this is good news for all of you who have supported us as customers these past few years and in recent months.

Upgrading live application hardware is not a simple task. We will be working diligently over the next few weeks to complete this. From time to time, our servers will be taken offline temporarily. We will only take the servers offline during times when there is the least activity and only for short periods of time. We may even experience some performance issues as we fine tune the servers and network switches.

I appreciate your patience as we work on getting this right. In the meantime, be on the look out for new and exciting announcements related to what we’ve been working on. We hope to have a formal announcement out in the next few weeks.

David Carroll, Founder Dude (a.k.a. CEO)
softRealty.com

Check out our other articles on Property Search API.

Check out our other articles on Property Search API.