privacy

Word Is Spreading Quickly About Bank Of America

When you become someone’s client, a unique and confidential relationship is formed where information exchanged between both parties is done so with privacy and care. For instance, when you take out a loan from a bank you start a relationship with them…a master / slave relationship. This is becoming more and more evident every time your bank makes a change “designed to aid” you as a client.

In the world of short sales, we have what is known as the “3rd Party Authorization.” This is when you, the borrower, authorize a 3rd party to speak to the bank on your behalf. It’s not a power of attorney, but it’s similar. You give someone else somewhat limited access to your identity in terms of your relationship with the bank.

In a relationship where you are the client, usually you’re always right (the only exception in my opinion is at a bar after said customer drinks too much.) You make the rules. Why? Because you hold the power to be their client or not. The bank cannot force you to be a customer.

A 3rd Party Authorization is as simple as a statement to the bank, in writing, signed by you, that you are authorizing person a, b, and or c etc., to speak on your behalf about your account. In fact, you can even call the bank and conference in a 3rd party who can then speak on your behalf for that phone call only.

Bank of America is issuing a new 3rd Party Authorization form specific to Short Sales which will soon be required. Apparently they are calling it a “standard” form, but if you ask me, a standard spans many brands and companies and is not specific to one. This new 3rd Party Authorization form is BofA’s form, not a standard form. If they really wanted to develop a standard they’d work with other banks to come up with a true equalizing standard.

(Note: As I’m writing this, I’m thinking about some of the other “practices” in the Short Sale world that don’t make sense.“)

There are two notable points about this form. The firstly, it’s specific to Short Sales. It’s not a general 3rd Party Authorization. Secondly, the form requires that, in terms of Short Sales, all parties MUST either be a licensed real estate agent, or attorney.

The form can be found here, if you’d like to review it.

They Just Gave You Away: Tagging Others in Facebook Places

Since the introduction of photo tagging in Facebook, there have been those who would rather not be associated with certain photos, quickly removing their tags from your unflattering or embarrassing photos. My argument has always been to give the photographer the option to make a tag private, so nobody but the author knows, simply for the sake of “tagging” as it’s intended…to index your photos by who is in them.

Now, with the release of Facebook Places, a location based “here I am” feature much like Yelp, Gowalla, and Foursquare, it is possible for you to tag someone else in your “here I am.”

Essentially, this is the same as photo tagging, but it’s really tagging the person in real time, but there’s no evidence that it’s actually true. In the photos, the tagged user is obviously there. In a Places tag, I could say someone is there who isn’t. That could cause problems.

For the transparent, who lives his or her life on the up and up, having someone tag you as being somewhere you are shouldn’t be an issue. After all, if you don’t want to be seen somewhere, why would you live in secret and hide it from others? There are certainly valid and healthy reasons you would want your location not to be disclosed.

Thankfully, you have control over this, but like most other privacy settings, the default is for the ability to tag you to be enabled, not disabled. If it wasn’t enabled by default, people wouldn’t know about it.

How To Prevent Others From Tagging You