Laws passed in Iowa in 2005 and 2009 require county recorders to participate in an online records system, but two counties are refusing to cooperate.  Two years ago, privacy advocates discovered the system contained hundreds of social security numbers - including Governor Chet Culver's.  Officials in Hamilton and Hardin counties are refusing to provide new records, citing privacy concerns.  The debate is heating up as the Attorney General's office reviews the situation.

I love technology, but it has been a while since I have gotten excited about anything new.  Finally, I have something new to look forward to.  A new phone is rumored to be headed to Verizon soon... no, it's not the Motorola Droid, which was recently released with a million dollar ad campaign.  It has been dubbed the HTC Dragon, aka HTC Passion, and it is exactly what I have been waiting for!

Scott Woolley at Forbes strikes again with another blasphemous article about title insurance. You may remember the rather insulting article he wrote in late 2006 - Inside America's Richest Insurance Racket.  So far, all he has shown is that he hasn't got the faintest clue about title insurance, but he is spreading his ignorance like an infectious disease.  In his latest rant against the industry, How To Save On Home Closing Costs, he mentions "title insurance and other dubious charges."  Somewhere along the line, perhaps in a former life, he must have been wronged by a title agent... this is apparently his revenge.

A few years ago, I assisted an Amish couple with the sale of their farm here in Ohio.  They moved to Wisconsin.  My attorney who lives near a large Amish community often helps them out with legal issues. For a real estate closing, he asked for my help.  When we did that closing, my attorney brought the couple to my office.  Since then, however, the couple has contacted me twice to help them with the transfer of some land that they still own here.  Without the aid of fax machines, or even a telephone, these closings always present some unique challenges.

There is a very interesting article in the Detroit Free Press about a man who found his Social Security number in the county's online records and how Wayne County handles these situations.  It is estimated that the number of documents in Wayne County that contain Social Security numbers is in the hundreds of thousands.  With the Federal Trade Commission estimating that identity theft costs approximately nine million Americans $50 billion per year, surely Wayne County has a comprehensive plan to redact vulnerable information from their records.... ummm... nope.

Source of Title recently ran a feature on documents that were discovered missing from the online records in two counties (see Title Examiner Discovers Documents Missing from Online Database). These incidents appear to have been limited to the online databases, but it should give us all pause for concern.  If this can happen with the online records, how can we be sure that the records we access in the courthouse, maintained by the same companies, are not subject to the same inconsistencies?  Truth be told... documents have disappeared from the computers at the courthouse too.

I recently wrote about Conflicting Claims Of Ownership and the effect of Ohio's Marketable Title Act ("the Act") on the claimants.  That blog was about two claimants that both had an independent chain of title to the same property, and both had been paying taxes.  There seemed to be no clear answer as to which individual actually owned the land.  However, a filing in the Notice Index would have preserved an interest that otherwise may have been lost due to the application of the Act.  Had a proper notice been filed, there would have been no doubt about the true owner's title.

NextAce has issued a press release that claims their customers are "expected to better weather the current mortgage crisis."  They make it sound as though they are offering a miracle cure for what ails the title industry.  We are in an election year, so we are used to puffery and promises despite the lack of facts.  But, this press release seems to go beyond that.  It could easily be adapted to a late-night infomercial hawking snake oil.