Retail Link Attacks The Auto-Downloader

For years many Retail Link users have been enjoying the benefits of "auto-downloaders" such as Harvest's Reap program and Tranceport's RL Downloader. To the dismay of many who have paid lot's of money for these time-savers, Retail Link is dropping the hammer by changing their login process to deny access on all downloaders, except for one; their own. According to the news section of Retail Link the reason for this is to "provide a more secure environment for their customers". Unfortunately they do not elaborate on what the security risk was. But it appears they don't want to deny users of auto-downloaders entirely so they are now providing their own downloader application for free.


The only problem with it, and it's a big one, is that you have to jump through hoops to get it to work. It's a bare bones application with no graphic user interface and was built with the intention that you understand XML or your I.T. guy would build a downloader program that would work using their open-source code. It will support running on one or more machines and can download for multiple ID's. The irony behind this though is that the reason for stopping 3rd party applications was for "security reasons". The program uses a config file, which can be opened in Notepad, where all the ID's and passwords are stored. In it's current sate it does not offer the security of the 3rd party applications.


One can't help but wonder if the strongest motivation for banning 3rd party downloaders was the fact that the number one application out there has the ability to circumvent their report scheduling plus check for "Ready" reports more quickly. Retail Link's new tool is limited to checking for finished reports every 10 minutes.


By the way, if your autodownloader that you paid for is still working I was told that it will cease to function once you have to change your RL password.