Just went down to do some title research on some property and found that the County Clerk in Johnson county will no longer let you back in to the Deed Books or on the Micro F. or See the imaged deeds on the computer. She said the Texas Attourney general shut it down do to Identity theft from S.S. numbers being on some of the Docs. You now have to fill out a request form for every doc you wish to see and they will then print it out or copy it for you at a $cost$ per page. Is this for real or is this some sort of Johnson county scam?
Vhawkes:
It’s true. It’s the same in Travis & Williamson Counties (Austin, TX).
I think that all States should simply block the SS# number off the documents. I went to the Recorder’s Office today and if I wanted to could have taken a bunch of info.
Well its still public info regardless and I don’t believe they should hinder the public access. Or they should print it on request for free!!! It will keep the ladies in the office very busy taking care of the requests. They will have to hire help in all counties and our taxes will cover the wages for the additional help needed to serve the requests for info that are free access to the public to begin with.
Title Companies are also affected. I think this could cause title fees to go up.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/02/27/27clerks.html?imw=Y
Collin County, too. :banghead
It comes down to them covering their bums. People having their identities stolen and linking it back to the Recorder’s office is going to start a snowball effect with lawsuits. You don’t need a SS# to do a search on a property. They should have covered the SS#s in the first place.
Florida just hides certain documents that contain that information, but the rest is available with SS# blocked out if the documents contain them.
That sounds pretty crappy you can’t do online work anymore.
Sorry guys,
~joshua
The Texas AG has just issued a 60 abatement of his opinion. Said it would cause too much havoc in real estate commerce. The Legislature has 60 days to fix things.
The abatement is effective today.
Sounds like good news!