Online marketing is a mess. I’ve been seeing a lot of scammy commercials online. One advertisement makes it sound like that people are having their houses stolen outright when that’s not really how it works, and title fraud in real estate is most common in high end areas and especially empty lots and non-primary residences. And the service they’re selling isn’t going to prevent it if it did happen, it’s just a monitoring service.
FTC – Home title lock insurance? Not a lock at all By Larissa Bungo Senior Attorney August 26, 2024 If you’ve seen ads for home title lock insurance, they might have you worried. After all, the ads say thieves can steal the title to your home. But then the ads tell you to buy title lock insurance to supposedly prevent home title theft. Stop. Take a breath. It’s just a ploy to scare you. First, know that “title lock insurance” is not title insurance. If you’re a homeowner, you might remember buying title insurance when you first bought your house. It protects you against challenges to the title, like a lien you didn’t know about. But “title lock insurance” is different — and it’s not insurance at all. Instead, it’s a service that claims to monitor your deed to protect you against title fraud. You’d only find out AFTER your title got transferred to someone else without your authorization. So much for the lock. Title fraud is identity theft: someone pretends to be you and transfers your deed to someone else. Title lock insurance (again: not a lock, not insurance) wouldn’t stop that. And you can check your title for free with your state’s land records office, and some areas even have a free notification program that allows you to sign up for alerts about any legal changes, like ownership of a property.
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Home Title Monitoring Services Mislead About a Rare Crime by Herb Weisbaum, The ConsumerMan Last updated July 1, 2024 In another ad, company pitchman (and former House Speaker) Newt Gingrich warns: “If you don’t check your home title every 24 hours, that’s all the time criminals need to steal it.” Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), told Consumers’ Checkbook that title monitoring is “a product in search of a problem to solve.” He described Home Title Lock’s advertising as “misleading and fraudulent,” and blasted the company for using “scare tactics” to exploit vulnerable people.