In past years, tradionalists, Luddites, and privacy advocates have denied and decried public agency records going online.

Some members of the Source of Title community have operated in open denial of this ongoing march which is part and parcel to the progress of Western Civilization.

Five years ago, the rallying cry was “more records are going offline than coming online.” Clearly a situation of wishing in one hand and you know the rest.

More recently, the cry of “if it's going to happen then there is nothing anyone can do about it”, has been heard from the same dark corners of the world.

Neither whine is a fine one.

Yes,, technology is putting more records on the internet for anyone to access and this will continue to be the case. Yes, there are steps everyone can still take to secure privacy. This is not a lose-lose situation for anyone, despite the dour outlook some professionals have adopted.

People often feel helpless and throw their hands up in defeat, instead of mustering the courage to venture forth and investigate matters for themselves.

As to the first issue, more records going online, good business professionals will look at this as an opportunity to expand their trade offerings and to do more with less cost. This will allow them to compete in broader areas of the market in terms of both geography and subject matter. This affords the opportunity for expansion of business to offer more, better, cheaper, and faster than the competition, so any professional would be a fool not to avail themselves of such resources. Putting your head in the sand will only get you an early retirement by way of empty coffers.

Secondly, the individual as a property owner, as a consumer, as a voter, as a business person, as a tax payer, and as a professional can take a variety of reasonable steps to secure their personal information from prying eyes. I say this and note the mult-millionaire who founded Wikileaks. He is noted for maintaining his personal privacy despite his social footprint. If he can do this, then so can anyone. I've talked about the use of trusts to hold property, activating privacy filters on your social network sites, and using fewer credit card / discount card-style transactions in favor of plain cash, in order to avoid being easily tracked and catologed.

These are only a few ,easy-to-implement suggestions among many that can increase your level of privacy. The nay-sayers believe that it is too hard to spend five seconds to do such things. They are married to the concept of lazy, easy to swipe systems which they are willing to have tracked and filed. They are the easy ones for the professional community to track.

This situation is analogous to the number of people who fail to exercise their right to create a health care directive against the eventuality that they become severely ill or injured. The resultant fights between “signficant others” and parents and children and others creates dramatic discord which helps nobody, especially the patient. Yet, many people suffer such emotional pain every day, and don't learn from the experience, exiting the hospital with the intention to execute directives and never following through.

I have ben told that there is no point in trying to be private because your information is “out there” anyway. I have responded with an inquiry as to their mothers maiden name, social security number and bank account information since it's already “out there” and there no point in trying to keep it secret.

All in all, I have no sympathy for those on any side who fail to recognize the reasonable and obvious facts of the world, nor those who, upon recognizing such facts, refuse to exercise their rights.