Ingram fixes website glitch

Ingram Micro has given its TechLink website a clean bill of health after a reseller reported he could see the customer order details of a competitor instead of his own.

The Brisbane-based reseller, who wished to remain anonymous, called ARN last week saying details of McDonell Business Solutions in Woy Woy, NSW had appeared on his account. The details included the name of one of its customers that was scheduled to receive a drop-ship delivery.

When contacted by ARN, McDonell Business Solutions owner, Peter McDonell, said he too had noticed anomalies on his account and had contacted Ingram earlier that day.

"I knew I had two orders in a pending folder but, upon logging on that morning, I suddenly had 12," he said. "I deleted all of them, except one I wished to keep. When I came back later, there was another order that wasn't mine."

McDonell was particularly surprised to find an order for 150 ViewSonic monitors valued at $67,000. "That definitely wasn't my order. I don't even have room to store 150 monitors," he said. Ingram Micro webmaster, John Uebel, said the problem turned out to be the corruption of McDonell's client ID, which had happened when an Ingram server had been under load.

"This problem has been previously unreported and I've since deployed another server to ensure it doesn't happen again," he said. "We've run a check and this was the only one with a corrupted ID."

Uebel said the likelihood of the error occurring again was remote because each TechLink page checks the login used and cross-references it with the permitted level of access. Ingram Micro managing director, Guy Freeland, downplayed the incident. "There are 9700 TechLink logins and it appears this was just an anomaly," he said. "The other 9699 logins didn't have issues as far as we're aware."

McDonell said he had been kept in the loop by Ingram during the process. However, he said he was somewhat unnerved by what might have happened if he hadn't noticed the anomaly quickly.

"Anyone could have ordered anything on my account, and what could I have said when it all turned up on my doorstep?" he said. "And in this day of dropship, what would have stopped someone setting up a bodgie address and having the goods delivered straight to them on my tab?"

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