Redfin user info temporarily exposed due to ‘technical error’
The incident, which allowed some home shoppers to see other users’ contact details, occurred earlier this month and was fixed within a week, the company said.
A technical blunder recently caused the temporary exposure of some Redfin users' contact information, the company confirmed this week.
What info was revealed? The names, phone numbers and email addresses of some Redfin website users became visible when contact forms popped up on the screens of other users as they viewed listings, The Intercept reported.
In most cases, the contact forms briefly auto-populated with some — or all — of this information from earlier users before their personal details disappeared. However, the information remained on the screen for users who were viewing listings with JavaScript disabled, according to The Intercept's reporting.
The fix: Once the publication flagged the data breach, Redfin reportedly made a change that at first only affected users viewing listings on desktop computers before a subsequent change also fixed the issue for mobile users.
What Redfin had to say: A Redfin spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company "recently identified a technical error on the website that temporarily made it possible for the e-mail address and/or phone number of a previous visitor to be visible to another user on a rental listing page."
"This error was active for less than a week and was remediated as soon as we were made aware of it," the spokesperson added.
The incident occurred earlier this month, the spokesperson told Real Estate News. Redfin declined to specify how many users may have had their personal data temporarily exposed.
Hiccup follows a big year for Redfin: The incident came near the end of a transformational year for Redfin, which started 2025 with job cuts and a rental listings partnership with Zillow, then announced its $1.75 billion acquisition by Rocket Companies in March.
Redfin users are increasingly turning to Rocket for home financing, according to Rocket CEO Varun Krishna, who told investors last month that the united companies aspire to bring "end-to-end integration to housing at a scale the industry has never seen."
On the brokerage side, the Redfin Next program appears to be boosting participants' incomes. Jason Aleem, Redfin's chief of real estate services, told Real Estate News last week that agent pay had increased by an average of 14% since the program rolled out nationwide a little more than a year ago.