The Denver couple that lost their life savings due to wire fraud has just filed suit against their lender, Realtor and title company, alleging that all parties routinely sent sensitive financial information through non-secure email, violating their own and industry guidelines. A quick version of this sad story is that after the couple sold their home and was in the process of purchasing another, their Realtor told them that they were going to be getting wiring instructions from the title company before closing. Two days later, the sellers received instructions from someone identifying themselves as with the title company, with all of the correct facts and figures on their “final” closing disclosure statement, so they wired the proceeds from their first home sale of $272,535 as instructed. Poof, the funds were stolen by a scammer who had hacked into one of the emails accounts to obtain that information. They lost all of the equity they had built in their first home, and the deal on their dream home fell apart due to lack of funds.  Full story on Denver7.

So what can you do as a professional entrusted to safe-guard client data?  Well, first, make sure you read our safety tips in the Protect Yourself from Hackers article last November after there were 2 similar scams to hit our own Berkshire membership.  Secondly, we’re asking you to seriously investigate the use of Ziplogix for all correspondence that contains any property specific data.  You can protect your clients by providing a secure environment for you, your clients and service providers to communicate.

• The site and documents remain encrypted and protected – no email trails full of confidential data!
• Transaction history is maintained with an audit trail that records all activities with date and time stamp.
• everyone in the transaction stays on the same page, knowing what occurs, when it occurs and who performed the action.
• Records are permanently retained within the transaction.
• When transaction documents are changed they can be viewed with highlighted changes and a summary of the changes that were made.
• Working collectively in a secure environment provides peace of mind to clients and keeps them invested in the transaction process.
• Included in your free service, not only is the ZipCommunity collaborative tool enabled, but so is archive exports for thorough record keeping.

ZipLogix “Community” training video – Share Real Estate Documents Safely Online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ate_8dOGbyg