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I would like to have a second place to live for a year and have been considering two options. One is to buy a less expensive house for cash then re sell it at the end. Should be straightforward, short escrow, need only to prove available funds. (And find such a place, lol.) Costs mainly would be realtors fees, taxes, insurance. Sell whenever convenient.
The alternative is to lease for a year. Share all private identity info with an unknown person or persons, including full name, birthdate, social security ID. And this is at the application stage, not after selection. Plus they want to know your nearest kin, and a local friend?
This is extreme in my opinion. A person with excellent credit and ability to pay the rent has everything to lose in today’s renting environment. Tons of new landlords and small management companies with no history and few records. Perfect opportunity to sell your info or commit fraud.
I’m beginning to think buying is the only safe alternative unless you are just starting in the work force and have little savings to put at risk.
What is everyone else’s opinion? Sure it’s fine when it works but when your identity is stolen and your accounts are compromised? Potential for disaster.
As someone who makes their living in the cybersecurity world, I would say you sound a bit paranoid.
The useful suggestions are to use a known large agency and to discover ahead of time whether they protect your data even from the landlords.
Those of you crying paranoia obviously haven’t been reading too many articles about protecting your personal info and why it’s needed. Some of you are probably among those that say “Why slow down? I’ve never had an accident weaving in and out of traffic at 100 mi per hour.”
But thanks for all the personal opinions. And the useful thoughts.
The useful suggestions are to use a known large agency and to discover ahead of time whether they protect your data even from the landlords.
Those of you crying paranoia obviously haven’t been reading too many articles about protecting your personal info and why it’s needed. Some of you are probably among those that say “Why slow down? I’ve never had an accident weaving in and out of traffic at 100 mi per hour.”
But thanks for all the personal opinions. And the useful thoughts.
Nobody's saying not to protect your personal info. But saying that you won't rent from anyone anywhere because of the off chance that they may steal your personal info is a little bit extreme.
But let me give you a better analogy than your 100mph driver. Just this past week, T-Mobile reached a settlement on their huge data breach wherein the personal info of 76,600,000 customers was disclosed. That included first & last names, driver license info, and Social Security numbers. Does that mean that you'd never get a cell phone because you don't want to provide your SSN to a cellular provider in case one gets hacked again?
And Equifax got hacked a couple years earlier to the tune of 147,000,000 files on people. And there's not a thing you can do to prevent your data from being among those disclosed by such a company. The best thing that you can do to protect yourself is to set up credit monitoring. That is a much better than worrying about some landlord or property management firm stealing your identity.
Nobody's saying not to protect your personal info. But saying that you won't rent from anyone anywhere because of the off chance that they may steal your personal info is a little bit extreme.
Exactly my point.
As a security professional, I have information residing in places I know could potentially be breached at some point in the future. But - I do what is necessary to protect myself, and I attempt to be as proactive as possible and use best cyber hygiene practices at all times.
The useful suggestions are to use a known large agency and to discover ahead of time whether they protect your data even from the landlords.
Those of you crying paranoia obviously haven’t been reading too many articles about protecting your personal info and why it’s needed. Some of you are probably among those that say “Why slow down? I’ve never had an accident weaving in and out of traffic at 100 mi per hour.”
But thanks for all the personal opinions. And the useful thoughts.
And you still haven't presented any data at all to show that rogue landlords are collecting applicant info and using it to steal identities. I've asked several times now. Put up or shut up.
This is a forum. I am reflecting what i have read over the past decade. You can do your own “study” by searching appropriately online.
But there was one reference pdf given in an earlier post that you may have missed, bless your heart.
I don't think you remember correctly what you have "read" if you think landlords collecting info is linked to identifty theft, bless your heart doubly.
The useful suggestions are to use a known large agency and to discover ahead of time whether they protect your data even from the landlords.
Those of you crying paranoia obviously haven’t been reading too many articles about protecting your personal info and why it’s needed. Some of you are probably among those that say “Why slow down? I’ve never had an accident weaving in and out of traffic at 100 mi per hour.”
But thanks for all the personal opinions. And the useful thoughts.
Large companies, municipalities, utilities, and big agencies have security breaches far more often than individual landlords who have a file cabinet in a spare bedroom... when it comes right down to it.
When deciding whether to rent or buy, fear of identity theft isn't really one of the top motivators, for most people.
This is a forum. I am reflecting what i have read over the past decade. You can do your own “study” by searching appropriately online.
But there was one reference pdf given in an earlier post that you may have missed, bless your heart.
Assuming you're referring to the SSA PDF that you linked to, that is simply a general info sheet, the key question isn't "is it possible", obviously it is, the _real_ question is "how likely". As been pointed out several times now, fraud is a possibility regardless of which tack you take, and until this point, you've not provided any hard numbers on prevalence one way or the other. However, if you are solely focused on identify theft (vs all the other ways to get taken advantage of), then it would not surprise me at all if submitting applications to random "landlords" has a higher probability of occurrence than purchasing real estate all cash.
That said, one wonders why your original post? Any response that appears to run counter to the notion that "landlords are evil scum and are simply waiting for some poor ******* to submit an app so they can sell/steal their identity" is met with "yeah but it's possible".
If the mere possibility of identity theft concerns you to the extent that it appears, then the answer seems quite obvious.
Last edited by austinnerd; 07-25-2022 at 11:58 AM..
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