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Little-Known Tool Is Giving Instant Access To Vast Amounts of Homebuyer Data (therecord.media) 98
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: When Florida real estate professional Susan Hicks discovered the app Forewarn over a year ago, she was shocked to learn that for a service costing about $20 a month she could instantly retrieve detailed data on prospective clients with only their phone number. "For anybody who's had exposure to this, usually the first time they see it, it blows their mind," Hicks told Recorded Future News, adding that she enthusiastically recommends the tool to the brokers she manages. "It's incredible that there's that amount of information out there that you can just access with one click." "It can be real creepy and you have to swear that you're not going to use it in a wrong manner," Hicks added, referring to Forewarn rules which say real estate agents can't share data from the app publicly or with third parties, or use the app to pull information on non-professional contacts.
Forewarn is primarily marketed to and used by the real estate industry, and it has been penetrating that market at a rapid clip. Although some real estate agents say the financial information it returns saves time when finding clients most likely to have the budget for the houses they're looking at, most agents and associations tout it primarily as a safety tool because it also supplies criminal records. In addition to those records, the product -- owned by the data broker red violet -- also supplies a given individual's address history; phone, vehicle and property records; bankruptcies; and liens and judgements, including foreclosure histories. Although such data could generally be gleaned from public records, Forewarn delivers it at the press of a button -- a function real estate agents say allows them to gather publicly available information without having to visit courthouses and municipal offices, a process which would normally take days.
The power of Forewarn's technology has led to rapid adoption, but the company is still largely unknown outside the real estate industry. Several fair housing and civil rights advocates interviewed by Recorded Future News weren't aware of its existence. The individuals whose data it sells also have no idea their information is being shared with real estate agents, who potentially might choose not to work with them because of what they discover on the app. Forewarn did not respond to multiple requests for comment, however, statements made by one of its executives suggest that the company intentionally keeps a low profile. "Do not tell the prospect that they are not permitted or unqualified to purchase or sell property because of information you obtained from Forewarn," a company executive said at a recent training webinar with Illinois real estate agents. She emphasized that potential buyers "do not get notified" when they are screened with the app, a question she said many real estate agents ask. Real estate agents who, for example, discover a client has a lien filed against them, should consider telling the prospect they "obtained this information from a confidential service that bases their information on available public record information," the executive added.
Forewarn is primarily marketed to and used by the real estate industry, and it has been penetrating that market at a rapid clip. Although some real estate agents say the financial information it returns saves time when finding clients most likely to have the budget for the houses they're looking at, most agents and associations tout it primarily as a safety tool because it also supplies criminal records. In addition to those records, the product -- owned by the data broker red violet -- also supplies a given individual's address history; phone, vehicle and property records; bankruptcies; and liens and judgements, including foreclosure histories. Although such data could generally be gleaned from public records, Forewarn delivers it at the press of a button -- a function real estate agents say allows them to gather publicly available information without having to visit courthouses and municipal offices, a process which would normally take days.
The power of Forewarn's technology has led to rapid adoption, but the company is still largely unknown outside the real estate industry. Several fair housing and civil rights advocates interviewed by Recorded Future News weren't aware of its existence. The individuals whose data it sells also have no idea their information is being shared with real estate agents, who potentially might choose not to work with them because of what they discover on the app. Forewarn did not respond to multiple requests for comment, however, statements made by one of its executives suggest that the company intentionally keeps a low profile. "Do not tell the prospect that they are not permitted or unqualified to purchase or sell property because of information you obtained from Forewarn," a company executive said at a recent training webinar with Illinois real estate agents. She emphasized that potential buyers "do not get notified" when they are screened with the app, a question she said many real estate agents ask. Real estate agents who, for example, discover a client has a lien filed against them, should consider telling the prospect they "obtained this information from a confidential service that bases their information on available public record information," the executive added.
It's not "technology" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's not "technology" (Score:4, Insightful)
The real question is: Are you legally allowed to deny them the service?
While I have no issue with public information being harvested and processed, I do have a big issue with what comes afterwards.
This is similar to trying to land a job: if the potential employer has access to a lot of your data and sees, for example, that you had a work conflict with a former employer, they might choose to give someone else the job, even though you are better suited and the work conflict was the former employer's fault and you won fair and square.
This is illegal in many countries (not sure about USA, though, YMMV). It's discrimination.
The problem is, it's exceedingly difficult to prove you were discriminated against, because you have no idea what prompted the prospective employer to deny you the job. All you know is "we decided to move forward with a different candidate", whatever that means.
Same for real estate. That dumb decision from 20 years ago, when you were young and stupid and threw a party in your rented apartment, where you invited some shady people without being aware who they really were would come and bite you right in the arse today. And you wouldn't even know it.
I'd advocate for a complete transparency when someone applies and is refused, be it for a job, renting/buying a home or other asymmetrical situations such as this.
"We refused your application because this, that and the other" - where the reasons must be explicitly mentioned.
Re:It's not "technology" (Score:4, Insightful)
Same for real estate. That dumb decision from 20 years ago, when you were young and stupid and threw a party in your rented apartment, where you invited some shady people without being aware who they really were would come and bite you right in the arse today. And you wouldn't even know it.
So make bad decisions, suffer the consequences. So the person who thought better of inviting randos and recklessly endangering his landlord's property should NOT enjoy future advantage in the market place by having a solid reputation for trust worthiness and responsibility?
Breaking federal law becasue of 'safety fears' (Score:2)
https://www.hud.gov/program_of... [hud.gov]
VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Fair Housing Act), as amended, prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings, and in other housing-related transactions, because of race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity and sexual orientation), familial status, national origin,
Notice how the entire article parallels how to vet a perspective person before a date? Multiple references to safety, multiple anecdotes to a few crimes so the reader co
Re: It's not "technology" (Score:3)
Throw a party in your 20s, tough shit! suffer the consequences. Be a convicted rapist and commit fraud, run for president...
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Hey now, Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick were totally asking for it. Oh, that wasn't who you meant you TDS riddled clown? History did not start in 2016.
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There is a reason for "statute of limitations" laws. Apps like this tend not to sunset old data.
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The statute of limitations imposes a time limit on prosecution. It says nothing about consequences for actual convictions.
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Yeah we could call it like "Social Credit" or something.
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What about bad landlords. Maybe instead of letting their tenants out of their lease we should track them in an app where we can keep tabs on them. Their cars, their families.
Maybe we should just make a web portal with mugshots and a list of crimes.
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Not after 20 years, no.
Person A at 19, desperate for approval from the frat house he wants to join is a totally different person from Person A at 39, with a nice job, a wife and two kids, with good credit and so on.
Maybe you'd think it's better to just off their heads and save them from being discriminated for the rest of their lives if they make a mistake while younger and less experienced. Why even bother letting them live though a shitty life? Right?
Re: It's not "technology" (Score:1)
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The real question is: Are you legally allowed to deny them the service?
Yes. Anti-discrimination law in the US works on a default-allow basis. Only those "protected classes" enumerated in the law are protected.
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If you're serious, that would probably be something like "reason #57 I won't move to the USA".
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If I'm hiring someone that has a history of suing their former employers or otherwise just doesn't seem to fit in, why would I want to introduce this problem to my own organization? Freedom of association means I'm free to not associate with you.
Sure, it sucks for the individual that has continued to make choices that make others look at you funny but that's life. Your choices in life have consequences.
Here is a good example. I know someone that committed check fraud 20 something years ago. It still haunts
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If I'm hiring someone that has a history of suing their former employers
Please don't alter my wording.
Having ONE work conflict in their employment history doesn't make someone a liability. Not unless you know all the details, from both parties, and come to the conclusion that person was in the wrong.
Your choices in life have consequences.
Of course they do. Pay your debts, go to prison, those are the consequences. Once that's done and they can legally get a job /rent a place / buy a house, you-name-it, they should be equal to everyone else.
Those long-lasting consequences you seem to be in love with are no less severe
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That dumb decision from 20 years ago, when you were young and stupid and threw a party in your rented apartment, where you invited some shady people without being aware who they really were would come and bite you right in the arse today. And you wouldn't even know it.
It's the lack of transparency that's the real issue here. Of course actions should have consequences. But if I don't know which action caused the consequences, how can I possibly fix it?
We see exactly the same thing with data harvesting to generate a credit rating, or to calculate health insurance premiums. Am I seeing a high premium because my grocery purchases are unhealthy? Or is it because my financial records say I don't have a gym membership and am therefore "unhealthy"? Do I have a bad credit rating
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As a seller, I don't really care all that much about the individual buyer. There's a decent chance I won't even meet them. Since everything has to got through other channels such as title companies and banks, it doesn't really matter since they will do all the due diligence.
I could definitely see why a real estate agent would want to avoid working with people that can't get a loan though. Why would you waste your time with someone that can't get a loan for a property?
And of course this software will be used
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It sounds to me like you need to find a local real estate agent who uses this and buy them a few beers until they give you a print out of what they can see about you.
This. It all comes back to old-fashioned social engineering.
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and it was wrong then and the only reason we hear about these companies now is because they're "normal" and can thus afford the bad press without getting regulated.
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They are scrapping public data. It's no different then if you went down to the court house and requested all this in person. The difference is now it can be done much quicker and cheaper.
If you want this to stop, then we need to stop making public records so accessible. Also, maybe we should review what precisely needs to be public data. There is a balance to be struck. I don't know where that line should be drawn either. There is a lot of grey area here.
Kafkaesque (Score:4, Informative)
No knowledge, no appeal, no house.
Gossip (Score:3)
Even worse than the discrimination is that its gossip but presented as truth. Gossip is acceptable in society because we know its gossip and can be wrong. So we pay attention to it but dont follow it blindly. But when the gossip is presented by an app and a website we believe its true and not gossip. Most people dont understand tech and think if a computer says so must be true. Suc
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Can I use it to not show my house to gays? How about not showing it to anyone who has made a facebook post opposing abortion?
Like everything, it's not a problem until conservatives experience the consequences. Like at will employment states. Conservatives love the idea because employers can fire no good lazy employees for any reason.
Covid happens.
Employers say get vaccinated or we fire you.
Suddenly it's no laughing matter and a new law has to quickly get passed.
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Can I use it to not show my house to gays?
According to current Supreme Court interpration of the Fair Housing Act, no.
How about not showing it to anyone who has made a facebook post opposing abortion?
AFAICS, there's no US law about that.
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Your political opinions are not a protected status. Being gay is a protected status. Does that help you understand things better?
You are allow to discriminate on things that are not legally protected statuses. If you think that's wrong, then you should contact your representative and tell them that you want a law passed that classifies your political opinion as a protected status.
Just imagine that for a second. I could be a raging communist or nazi but with a law like that, you still have to deal with me, r
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Choosing not to do business with someone because you get bad information, that you decide not share with them so they can't correct it is also an economic loss to you.
No, it is not.
If you only have ONE applicant, you WILL do business with that person, no matter what.
But if you stand to gain money out of any of those 5 applicants, but the "flagged" one is willing to pay an extra $50 a month, you can definitely afford to eat a bit into your profit and reject that applicant. It's still technically an "economic loss", but one you can easily afford.
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Your point is what? There is nothing wrong (or there should not be) with selling and renting to the client that offers YOU the most economic advantage. - Which could very well include charging someone a premium because others are unwilling to work with them.
Risk - should yield greater reward. Sure I'll lend a bunch of people with terrible credit money but you'd better believe the rates will be high enough to make the principle losses I'll likely suffer on some of the loans a cost of doing business that wi
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Housing is a human need, and a right according to international human rights law. Profit off of housing is not.
We're not cool with people doing this with any other human need. For example, we wouldn't be okay with grocery stores vetting potential customers, refusing to sell to some people, and charging other people $.50 more per item for some unstated reason - or even a stated reason. Not even if it would give the grocery store owner the mos
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Housing is not a right. No one owes you a roof over your head. You need to provide for yourself. Most of us do this by selling our services to others to make money to pay for housing.
I'm under no obligation to make sure you are housed. That's YOUR problem.
And LOL, we totally charge for food and profit from it. In fact, grocery stores have been making good profits the past few years. When they stop being profitable, they leave the region. We call these food deserts. Thing is, no one owes you a meal either. T
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WTF? "Housing is a human need" is not the same as "Housing is a right", but you jumped right to it and ran with it.
They also didn't say shit about charging for food or making a profit. They said we're not cool with a store charging some class of people more than another class of people for food.
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Your point is what? There is nothing wrong (or there should not be) with selling and renting to the client that offers YOU the most economic advantage. - Which could very well include charging someone a premium because others are unwilling to work with them.
Risk - should yield greater reward. Sure I'll lend a bunch of people with terrible credit money but you'd better believe the rates will be high enough to make the principle losses I'll likely suffer on some of the loans a cost of doing business that will still net out in my favor.
That doesn't bother me at all, as long as the process is transparent and actionable.
X should be able to know exactly why Y rents him that place for 20% more than would rent to Z, furthermore X should be able to dispute the reasons.
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Not at all - i assume the people using the information have made their assessment of how valid the source is.
Reliability is a component in how you react to negative information about a counter party.
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Or maybe you decide being a landlord is a lousy business with too many risks and you don't do it.
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Do you think you could make some money out of them by suing them for slander? If so, this is definitely something we should promote! Hopefully, enough people would sue to make it not worth their while to pass arbitrary judgements over people based on non-verified data.
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Unfortunately, last time I had to deal with this, I discovered that it isn't slander if the company is just repeating public records. You would have to sue the government entity that had the wrong records associated with your phone number.
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Maybe the company *should*, but under current law, they are not. It is considered good faith to pass on public records information. That information is presumed to be correct (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary). In the law's view, the company isn't making any claims; the company is reporting claims made by others. At least, that's what I was told regarding the various credit reporting agencies.
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If you're gonna claim that someone's a wanted murderer or a child sex offender, you'd b
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It is the *realtor* who is associating it with a real person. The company providing the data is just saying what's associated with the phone number. The company never says "and this is the same person as is in our database." And the realtor isn't making any claims whatsoever: the realtor just decides not to do business with a given person, without specifying why. There's no culpability for anyone in the chain. Pretty neat, huh?
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(That last comment was sarcasm.)
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Re: Kafkaesque (Score:2)
It would be interesting to hear the results of such an experiment. In all seriousness, let me know if you try it.
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Re: Kafkaesque (Score:2)
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Umm, you mean scrapping public records that are probably mandated by some law to be public records? They are a data aggregate company. Nothing new here really. It's just done at a larger scale.
The exact same thing could of happened 30 years go when a real estate agent decides to pull public records at the court house on a potential client and found out their client wasn't someone they wanted to conduct business with.
Turns out, when you make poor choices for yourself there are unforeseen consequences such as
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I mentioned this earlier, but why do we need all these databases? Why not just go with SLCs and a PKI? Start out with someone having a smartcard or other token with solid security (maybe a generation newer than a CAC, perhaps doing facial recognition and/or fingerprint, as well as a PIN. The biometrics are to establish the user, and the "password" is the PIN), and then add certificates onto that card. For example, if the user is over 21, add a cert. This way, if the card validates, the bar knows the ca
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I'm not opposed to changing how things work, just illustrating that this is indeed how things are currently working.
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Bad agents are everywhere but a good agent can tell you things like why you don't want to be in a particular area or get you into a house before it's in MLS which is what Zillow data is.
With a -good- agent I can snap up a house you never knew existed.
6% is a ridiculous fee but they do have value.
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The only reason they keep them off the open market for a bit is so they can collude to bilk everyone a little more.
Sure you can get a bid in sooner by playing the game, but you're swimming in sewage and collaborating with scammers for the privilege.
Re: Real estate agents? (Score:2)
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Stuff's been made to seem hard, and it's a pain, yeah, but not so much so that it's opaque and we need someone to guide other than legal advice. The other gal you want is a good inspector if you don't know house stuff.
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Don't tell hem about us (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wonder if anyone can sign up for their service?
The second sentence says it's $20 which is low enough that they would be unable to stay in business if they restricted their clientele.
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From a glance at their web site they are targeting any professional who has face to face meetings with new clients on a regular basis which would be way more than just real estate agents. (Although the 'Industries' section only lists real estate at this point, the language on the main page is pretty generic) I can understand the motivation for professionals in that situation wanting to vet the safety of people they are going to meet alone with, especially real estate agents who will be meeting alone with a
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I wonder if anyone can sign up for their service?
The second sentence says it's $20 which is low enough that they would be unable to stay in business if they restricted their clientele.
I thought so as well; and they need to keep prices low as from my experience real estate agents are notoriously cheap.
Why not just be up front? (Score:2)
Yes, a help desk to remove potentially faulty information adds cost ... but a (class action) lawsuit for fucking it up without providing recourse will cost them a lot more.
There is obviously huge value in agglomerating public records, enough to be honest about it.
This could do some damage... (Score:5, Insightful)
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An actual capitalist needs accurate information to make profitable decisions.
This tool is for people for whom unfair decisions is itself the objective.
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Apparently you should get a real estate agent to vet your new cell number before you accept it.
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Welcome to PHv6, with so many phone numbers we'll never run out, and everyone is assigned their number at birth.
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If you were told that specifically then I believe you have found a legal angle that could take this sort of company down.
They aren't selling identity information, just data associations. Any claim otherwise is fraud (they may have small print about this but that wouldn't resolve the legal issue arising from your "interaction" with such).
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Username checks out. You should get probably another phone number.
But do they make you pinky-swear? (Score:2)
"It's incredible that there's that amount of information out there that you can just access with one click." "It can be real creepy and you have to swear that you're not going to use it in a wrong manner..."
Really? Cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die? If we can't even trust law-enforcement officers who take career-spanning oaths to not abuse this kind of information access, how can we trust fucking real estate agents??? There aren't enough expletives in all the languages of the world to describe this.
"For anybody who's had exposure to this, usually the first time they see it, it blows their mind," Hicks told Recorded Future News, adding that she enthusiastically recommends the tool to the brokers she manages. "It's incredible that there's that amount of information out there that you can just access with one click."
Way to go Susan! You just told the whole world that you'd sell out your fellow humans for a commission cheque without actually saying the words. I guess I should praise you for (inadvertently) revealing your (lack of)
Public records (Score:3)
Years ago went looking for some test data for a small project and the shit you can get from the Feds and county PR and GIS departments is amazing.
Yet another (Score:3)
A data consolidator (Score:2)
I used to work for a company that had a product similar to Forewarn except it provided all of that kind of information about corporations. Their complete financial history, any litigations or defaults, their bill paying habits, their debts and cash holdings, the names and contact info of all the employees, on and on.
It turns out that there is quite a bit of publicly available info out there about people and companies if you know where to look. And then there is data that surreptitiously gets scraped and acc
Where is the opt-out? (Score:2)
I went on their page to look for an opt-out feature for my data and found none. I sent a request through their contact form, which seemed geared towards investors. Are they legally required to erase your data if you request it, or are they under no obligation to do so? I am in California we have tighter privacy laws than most places.
Re: Where is the opt-out? (Score:1)
A message from forewarn (Score:2)
"Thanks for the free advertisement Slashdot! Our sales just went through the roof!" -Representative from forewarn.
How many decades have we been going through this? (Score:3)
Public information is public. Thanks to ... er, technology that's been around for decades, it's now easily compiled and distributed.
If that's a bad thing, then maybe we need to rethink which data we make public.
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I remember when everybody's name, address, and phone number were published in a book everybody got for free!