[thehoodedcoder]

If you as a customer, do not trust the software that the auction house uses for, say reliability for taking your bids and it affected your bidding strategies etc. couldn't and wouldn't it affect your business with merchants that use that software?

On a similar note, If you knew that you constantly get screwed by that software's max bid system wouldn't you be hesitant to buy from people that use it?

I'd like to think so. You as a buyer have to trust the seller, and the software manufacturer which is an extension of the sellers business model. It is upon both of them of them to make and implement software with integrity. If there is no useful purpose for that information or that information can only be used to perpetuate things which are illegal, then I would say that it is equally as important for the software manufacturer to put adequate protections into place to protect against their own liability.

I'm certain that if it ever got out, that the software could do that, the number of people wanting to bid with that software using a max bid, would go down fast. I have always questioned to what extent the software protects against someone with above average computer skills, from determining what a max bid is, even if the software had intentions to hide this information and I'd still be interested in investigating the back end, and code to determine if there are any gaps that should be closed.

As a side note, consider this scenario: If say B and L use SimpleAuctionSite for their business and someone finds an exploit in the software which was reported as a problem(lets say personally identifiable information loss or credit card numbers are stolen) which was not addressed by the software vendor who knew the problem existed, the software vendor could be liable for not addressing known issues which resulted in the losses to the customer due to negligence.

Kevin