Another New Zealand business made headlines today with a vibe-coded website left open for anyone to edit.
This time, the only damage was some embarrassment for an Auckland store, with memes, politicians and assorted objects briefly listed for sale before the site was hurriedly pulled offline.
In June there was a much more serious incident where a Wellington pharmacy exposed patients’ private medical details in almost exactly the same way, with the site’s administrator functions left wide open for anyone to access.
So how does this happen?
Both sites were built on the ‘no code’ AI website platform Base44. The concept of the platform is you tell it what sort of app or site you want, and it builds it for you at a fraction of the cost of having it done professionally. Easy eh?
The trouble is, it’s also easy to make critical security errors, or simply fail to implement security at all. You might assume the platform would have that covered without your needing to ask, but if you don’t know, you don’t know.
Building any software – websites included – requires more than just generating some code and calling it done. There’s a duty of care and 101 potential pitfalls to avoid, which you simply cannot trust AI platforms to handle for you.
But everyone uses AI to code…
Don’t get me wrong, AI coding absolutely has its place. If you need to whip up a quick in-house dashboard or a simple tool for a one-off job, it can be a real time saver and productivity enhancer.
Nearly all developers (myself included) are now using AI to speed up the core tasks of software and web development, but we can do so with the benefit of experience and knowledge around good and bad practices, mistakes to watch out for and key things to check and confirm.
Using one-shot platforms to make an entire public-facing website is at best unwise. Using them for a site hosting personally identifiable information (PII) is straight-up negligent.
If you are lucky you will just end up with something which looks generic and feels low-effort, showing your customers how much you (don’t) care. Admittedly some customers won’t notice or care either, but some definitely will and do.
If you are less lucky you’ll leave your site wide open for anyone to edit or steal your data, or worse the data of customers who trusted you to look after them.
Do better
At Mogul we take pride in putting care and thought into what we do for our customers. Sure, we use AI tools to help where appropriate, but ultimately we do the work and stand by what we produce.
We take the time to understand our customers and their customers. It’s a simple concept but it requires effort and care, supported by almost two decades of experience.
Interested in a more thoughtful digital presence? Let’s talk.
