Are you planning on buying a home in the Houston Texas area this summer? If so, during the home buying process you will be asked to provide confidential information to your mortgage lender and real estate agent.

Sadly, in 2019 it’s not uncommon for there to be many scams involving the theft of confidential information from home buyers, this is why you should follow these tips to ensure that your information stays safe during the home buying process.

Protect Confidential Information Online

Once you start the home buying process you’re going to be asked for your confidential information multiple times in a variety of different ways. To protect yourself you should consider doing things like signing up for services like credit monitoring, identity theft monitoring and enabling two-factor identification on all of your accounts just to give yourself that extra layer of security and protection.

Confirm How Companies Will Protect Your Data

After taking extra steps to protect your cyber house you should next take steps to learn how your lender and real estate agent will protect your data or confidential information.

This step is important because even though larger lenders and real estate agencies have more standards in place regarding the use of information, it’s not uncommon for some smaller agencies to have little to no standards in place for how they store documents or their use of encrypted database.

Taking the extra step of asking how your confidential information will be stored could save you the hassle of choosing the wrong company and having your data fall into the wrong hands.

Don’t Send Confidential Information Via Email

Last of all, but most important, another thing to remember when it comes to protecting your confidential information is that you should never send your personal / confidential information over email unless you call the individual who requests it just to confirm their request.

This step is vital because it’s not uncommon for hackers to create “spoof” addresses that they can use to fool homeowners into sending their bank statements via email and it’s the homeowner finds out that they’ve been scammed after their account has been hacked and money drained.

Search For Homes In Houston Texas

To learn more about this issue, or to search for a home in the Houston Texas area, contact me at (713) 819-1642 or click here to connect with me online.