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Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth. If you own Real Property in England, even if only a Leasehold (Long Lease e.g. 99 years) you can get the Land Registry to email you about activity or, once per year, the lack of activity for your property records.

https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/

Land Registry records have a sort of poor man's locking. The buyers (or in practice their solicitor) need to first perform a "Search" which would get recorded as activity, some time before they can file paperwork to claim it was sold, and so that gives you considerable time to say "Hey, I'm not selling this, why is there a Search by Honest But Incompetent Solicitors LLC?" and phone up to yell at somebody.

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It is always nice being vigilant for all and every possible scam and fraud out there coming our ways, being ready and prepared for whatever comes from whatever direction and for whatever target of ours, going after every suspicious matters we encounter or believe we encounter, being suspitious against as much as possible preparing ourselves for all kinds that could happen out there, but shouldn't be required. If it is required then the sytem does not work, need to be fixed! Not the victims.

I have to agree with this. A little O/T, but reminds me a bit of how US patents are handled. If you're able to constantly monitor patent publications (the stage where patents are disclosed but still in review), it is cheap and easy to challenge applications. But good luck trying to get any work done while trying to to keep up with the deluge of patent publications!

If you miss your chance to challenge the patent before it issues, the cost to protest goes way up, even if your arguments would have been just as valid during the publication phase.

I get that the system is trying to reward vigilance, but it punishes people who put more time into sharing ideas than protecting them, especially considering the PTO does not search most modern repositories of open source for prior art.

This is how I feel. I'm all for encouraging potential victims to take reasonable precautions, but especially when the system could be fixed if a few people tried, it eventually gets tiresome. I've been given free "credit monitoring" a few times because of data breaches at places that should have done a better job of protecting my data. But there is so much noise impacting my credit score that I just don't even bother looking at it anymore. I would hope this property system does better, at least. The annual "no activity" email would at least be nice occasional dose of peace-of-mind.

At what point in human evolution did we flip from hunter-vs-hunted on the savannah to sublime docility because we now have _the system_ to _ensure safety?_

probably at forming societies, protecting each other - and so ourselves - from harm.

> It is always nice being vigilant for all and every possible scam and fraud out there coming our ways, being ready and prepared for whatever comes from whatever direction and for whatever target of ours, going after every suspicious matters we encounter or believe we encounter, being suspitious against as much as possible preparing ourselves for all kinds that could happen out there, but shouldn't be required.

Yes, and anybody convicted of fraudulently conveying a house should be convicted, and surely you will agree, be given a run-on sentence!

seriously though, you're absolutely right, the burden of this type of thing should not fall on the individual. So called "identity theft" shouldn't be on the victim at all.

I don't think you'll find anyone who disagrees with the ideal of not burdening the victim but I would suggest it's much healthier for society to praise a victim for doing the extra work to punish antisocial behavior.

The reality is we desperately need victims help to expose offenders for many types of antisocial behaviors and while we all want victims suffering to end, maybe as a society we could turn victimhood into an opportunity to be a hero? Of course this wouldn't/shouldn't shoulder the burden on victims but should they choose to take on the task, society would reward them with praise instead of sympathy.

I don't know that this is entirely viable, but wouldn't it be nice for the violated to get cheers instead of sympathy cards?

we don't require murder victims to help out the prosecution of the offender, the state takes that role.

the point is, it should be the same here.

No one is suggesting a requirement. Are you making a tangential point or did you interpret me as suggesting we should require victims to participate in helping the prosecution?

This sort of scam is really common in Kenya. Walking around you'll see plenty of houses with large spray-painted letters stating 'THIS HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE.'

Ah, I wondered why those signs were so prevalent when I visited. Thanks for the explanation.

That's messed up — it pushes the blame onto the victims for not monitoring.

Rather similar to "identity theft", the strange name for a particular form of (usually bank) fraud.

It’s called identity theft to make it more the victims problem. If it was bank fraud, the bank would definitely have to deal with all aspects. As it is, consumers get a big chunk of the burden.

Please don't throw around accusations of victim-blaming like this.

No one is claiming that the victim is at fault. But I do think it's useful information to pass along that it's possible to get notified of things like this before they become big problems.

It's like... it's not my fault if I get mugged at 3am in a part of the city known for being full of violent crime, but I also should have known better than to be walking around in a part of the city known for violent crime at 3 in the morning. Just because I am the victim, it doesn't mean I couldn't have avoided an incident if I'd used common sense.

It's about outcomes and reality: sometimes we have to take on a little extra responsibility in order to make it less likely a bad thing will happen. That's not fair or just, but it's the way the world works.

The problem is the absurdly unjust system that needs monitoring. It's not "just the way the world works", because it doesn't have to be the way that it is, and it should not be the way that it is.

A system that requires constant, complicated intervention to function properly ensures that those with the resources and background to know that they have to exercise constant vigilance against malfeasance will come out ahead over the long run.

In general that's true, but in this particular case I'm not sure it follows. This is a very infrequent occurrence, which is why it made the news. From a societal perspective, further investment in security here is probably a net drag since all those security measures will also apply to every valid sale and there are vastly more of those. The pot of money that pays out to victims of fraud doesn't make those people whole, but it's enough to solve the problem well enough that it's probably reasonably close to a global minimum in terms of total cost across everyone in society. For those that are concerned about the personal risk, being able to do your own monitoring is a nice enhancement.

It is a infrequent yet catastrophic risk however for everyone that owns any land or property in the UK - and it would definitely keep me up at night if I had any property there!

> it would definitely keep me up at night if I had any property there

If that would keep you up at night, then given all the actual dangers in the world you have never slept.

What is unjust? There's (claimed) fraud committed, and it's under investigation. 'Justice has not yet been served', sure, but maybe let 'the system' work before decrying it as 'unjust'?

What would you have be done differently, immediately turf out the new 'owner', who in his eyes paid for it fair and square?

Assuming it's all true, presumably it will be returned to the true owner, the transaction reversed, and the cheated non-owner will have a solid civil case against the defrauder for the inconvenience and expense.

> Please don't throw around accusations of victim-blaming like this.

You're pissing into a hurricane. Complaining of victim blaming at the slightest opportunity will persist so long as it is rewarded with up-votes.

You get what you incentivize.

This is a pathetic and harmful attitude. You should not encourage victims (or would be victims) to be helpless.

I immediately parsed 'rectang's post as not implicating the failure-prone system that allows this and necessitates having the victims of such fraud be vigilant in such a manner.

And they are correct.

Truth. A much better system would be for the titles office to proactively get in touch with owners through a second channel to inform them of any activity/changes, including change of communication details.

Security and freedom are both active pursuits. Anything unattended will be repurposed and recycled by law of nature, in one way or another.

We humans can and do try to fight against nature. But that's exactly what it is, a fight! And I doubt the Art of War said "Pay no attention to your enemies. They will leave you be."

In the US I’ve always been told it’s in the best interest of a home owner to always have some type of bank loan on the property. Mortgage, even a zero balance HELOC. Supposedly, this allows the bank to ensure there’s no title fraud because they maintain a claim to it.

if you're really paranoid you could put a charge on it too (like a bank or a building society would have)

makes it a much less tempting target

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