Can anyone buy your Identity?

by Daryl Maksymec
CEG Research,
CanEquity Mortgage

As the director of marketing for the Canadian Equity Group one my roles is to keep an eye on the competition. While fulfilling that role, I have made some important discoveries. Recently there have been new competitor websites popping up that have online applications for debt consolidation and mortgage loans. This is a growing concern to me since some of these are not actually licensed mortgage brokers, but rather opportunists trying to gather mortgage leads and then resell them to mortgage companies like CanEquity Mortgage. What mainly concerns me is that practically anyone can purchase these leads for as little as three (3) dollars US each!

Companies wanting to sell us mortgage leads have been flooding my inbox for years. I really did not notice or even pay much attention to them since our spam blockers were trapping these questionable propositions. But recently we have had these companies actually try contacting us by phone. This prompted me to do a little digging and I was shocked and appalled by what I’d discovered. I had found some of these online applications actually requesting account numbers and balances of credit cards for their creditor enrollment information. Others have no SSL (secure socket layer) server in place. And many do not have any visible privacy polices or contact information. So where is your information going?

Although most of these companies seem to be coming in from the US, I’ve seen them as far away Guynana, South America. They do appear to be randomly soliciting Canadian mortgage websites offering mortgage leads, no questions asked. This means that they are receiving Canadian leads and that practically anyone can purchase this information if they represent themselves fraudulent manner.

My advice is to protect yourself by doing a little research before submitting an online mortgage application. Protecting your identity or the abuse of your personal information far out-weighs even the lowest mortgage rate out there. So be wise and be careful! Here are a few steps to help make sure your information is being sent and used accordingly.

1. Make sure you are submitting your information to a company in Canada.

To verify you are sending your personal information to a Canadian company, the first thing you can check is the actual domain name (ie. canequity.ca). The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) will only release the ‘.ca’ to Canadian residences. Secondly, you can see who owns the domain also by doing something called a ‘Whois Lookup’. Many registrars like Domain People offer this service for free and its simple to do; just enter the domain and do a search. Most importantly, check to see if there is a ‘privacy policy’ somewhere on the application. Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (or PIPED Act) requires all Canadian companies gathering personal information to do so. The privacy policy must also have a visible contact name and address available.

2. Make certain you are filling out an application on a secure server.

The way to confirm that you're on a secure socket layer is to look for a locked key or padlock at the bottom of the browser screen. These symbols mean that the information you are sending is encrypted for online transmission and that you’re on a secure server. Another way to verify this is within the website address or URL. Secure URL’s always start with an ‘https:’ rather than an ‘http:’, so make sure there the letter ‘s’ is present.

3. Do not send unnecessary information.

Mortgage brokers never need to know your credit card or account numbers, nor should they ever ask questions like “what is your mother’s maiden name?” Although your Social Insurance Number (SIN) makes performing credit checks much easier and eliminates any chance of accidentally accessing someone else’s report, in most cases it is not necessary to send it with your initial Internet application.