I was talking to a friend this morning about how much have changed in real estate over the years. Some of you that have been in this business for a while have seen tremendous changes. In the near ten years we've been in real estate we've seen more than a few; one of the biggest was abolishing the MLS books. Today we can access just about any piece of information our little hearts could desire with only a few simple keystrokes. One of the other major changes I've seen happened a few years ago when our board finally got rid of our old lockboxes - you know, the ones with the metal key that if you didn't hold your mouth just right and grunt at the perfect moment the box didn't open. Those were fun to play with at -40 let me tell you. Today we have electronic lock boxes that are a breeze.
Technology has certainly made our lives much more efficient. I would say "easier" but there are some that say our lives are more hectic because the available technology has enabled us to complete tasks faster, which in turn moves us to the next project, all at lightening speed.
We'll leave that debate for another day. While I appreciate the changes in technology and have embraced them, even if some days it does try my patience, there is a price to pay for this new level of efficiency.
Open you email on any given day and you will find a request from a bank or credit card company you might or might not do business with asking you to confirm you account information. Some of these sites are indeed very good replicas of the original, leading many to mistakenly off up such personal information as their social security numbers, date of birth, account and pin numbers. It isn't long before the victims discover the disasterous effects of putting this information in the wrong hands. Bank accounts are drained, new lines of credit are opened and existing credit evaporates in a sea of fraudulent charges while the victim is left to pick up the pieces - a process that could take years and cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Can you imagine divulging this personal financial information to a total stranger? Unfortunately a great many agents are putting their clients at grave financial risk by exposing these very private, confidential details. If you use email as a means to communicate with your client, the other agent in a transaction, the lender or title company you may very well be disclosing information your client would probably prefer to keep a secret.
I received an offer today from an agent that, along with the offer and related information, contained the buyer’s credit report. How it ended up attached to the offer I'll never know, but there it was right after the acknowledgement page. Six pages of detailed credit history complete with account numbers, credit limits, and the always critical social security number. Yikes!
I notified the buyer’s agent that I had received a copy and ran it through the shredder. When I spoke with her she asked me if anyone else had seen it. I told her that to my knowledge, no one outside the folks on my payroll would have had access on my end. But, and it's a baby's-got-back-two-time-zone sized but, since she sent everything via email I had no idea who might have seen or downloaded the information.
Many of you know this, but when we send information out across the great information superhighway, it's not a direct secure device to device transmission. That data is blasted across a sometimes open network where, unless encrypted, can be downloaded and read by anyone from Ashbury Park to Africa (maybe that's where that Nigerian Defense Minister accumulated all that money his heirs keep trying to give away). The agent said "oh, well, I'm not worried about that. I just meant in your office." Truly?
Several years ago I started using MessageGuard from Network Solutions, the company that hosts my website. It integrates and works seamlessly with Outlook and Outlook Express. Anytime I have a confidential document that needs to be emailed to a client, lender, escrow officer, etc. I use SecureMail. While I realize that precious little is truly secure in cyberspace and that any hacker could get their grubby little fingers on a clients personal information if they tried hard enough, it's much less likely to be intercepted and read if sent through a secure server or other encryption device.
I'm sure there are dozens of such products on the market that all perform the job with similar results. The system I use sends an email to the recipient alerting them that a secure message has been received and instructs the reader to click on a link in the message body. The link takes the user to a security encrypted website where the reader has to set up a username and password. Once established, which takes literally a minute, they can log in and read the message and download any attachments. Easy as pie.
When we started using this service we ran into all kinds of resistance, mainly from other agents; our clients immediately understood the importance. "It's too much trouble." "It's another username and password I have to remember." If excuses were nickels, we would be retired and living on our private island in the Mediterranean. Since that's not the case I'll continue practicing good offense so I don't spend Kathy's hard earned nickels on legal fees and E&O deductibles. (Instead I'll spend them on moorage fees, new electronics for the boat and air fare to go play.)
Personally I prefer to make plans based on the worst case scenario - i.e. what could happen if I failed to adequately protect my clients confidentiality and they were harmed because of my actions? I don't know the answer to that question and frankly I would prefer not to have to find out the hard way. I do know that if I'm ever called to answer for how I handled a clients confidential information I can honestly say I took reasonable precautions to preserve their confidentiality. Are YOU disclosing your clients confidential information? If you're sending any sensitive documents via email without any type of encryption, you may very well be.
Stay safe. Be proactive. Never forget our primary obligation is to promote and protect our clients bests interests.
Fairbanks Ak Real Estate Broker Jesse Clifton
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Jesse & Kathy, protecting confidentiality is tough these days when so much can be forwarded through email. I have become slow to hit the SEND button on emails before I am sure what I am sending is what I want to send. You were very professional in alerting the other agent about that credit report.