@Anonymous wrote:Hello,
Our lender is in another city. Since our documentation for our loan application contains a number of pieces of private information that could be ripe for identity theft, what methods are normally used for transferring documents?
Fed-Ex? Fax? E-mail?
What are the "best practices" for sending information?
Thanks!
FedEx is your best option or USPS Express mail with restricted delivery. If they offer secure fax systems, like US Bank does, then you would be better off using that system. Its quicker and comparatively safer but if they want originals or don't have that, stick with FedEx or USPS Express. Avoid UPS as they are not that good in this department. Good luck.
@Anonymous wrote:
I was stressing over the same thing. Fed Ex is extremely safe, imo. You can do email and password protect all your .pdf files. Just don't send them an email with the password, LOL, prearrange one over the phone. Fax is iffy because some people use fax to email programs that automatically turn their faxes to email and sends them to their computer. I just learned that recently thanks to my on-the-ball LO. I would have never thought of it.
If you are going to use fax, make sure its a secure fax system. The simple act of receiving it on the server and delivering to email is not the security breech, its how its done. For US Bank for example, they handle all that on their internal intranet system which is completely secured and when they send a fax out, it is processed the same way. However, if you use services like eFax, J2, myFax then yes you are open to being intercepted as the fax is only as secure as the connection.
@Anonymous wrote:
Our lender has sent us some password protected PDF files via email and that's worked out well for us. It wouldn't help much if it's stuff that needs to be signed though unless electronic signatures are accepted.
Password protected PDFs are great in most cases. However, let me tell you as someone who developed for 15 years and has done extensive security analysis, PDF security is easily defeated and not all third party software respect the security protocols. That's why they warn you when you password protect that its not a guarantee. Just a little heads up that's all.
Likewise i have a relative that's worked for both UPS and FedEx and could tell you some security stories... lol
Nothing's 100% but it's good option compared to others anyway 