For a long time in Australia when you purchased property you had to visit the local Land Titles office or local equivalent to pay your stamp duty and get paperwork done. Recently several state governments decided to outsource this critical function to a private company, the Property Exchange Australia - PEXA. It was seen as a win-win with a private company taking over storing and maintaining land titles and the State Governments getting a kick back for it. Until it all went wrong recently when $250,000 was stolen from a PEXA conveyancer's account.
The victim of the hack was Dani Venn, who is well known for being on the local version of Masterchef. PEXA has claimed no responsibility for the loss and with the PEXA system soon to be made mandatory in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, many people are concerned that the system is not secure and should not be used for title or money transfers. While the Commonwealth Bank was able to freeze and recover 138K of the funds, 110K is still missing leaving Ms Venn in the lurch. PEXA has claimed to be taking action to secure the service.
While PEXA has claimed that their online system will be of benefit to lawyers, sellers, buyers and real estate agents, the reality of moving data out of offline systems to internet based servers may very well have just created the sweetest honeypot ever seen online in Australia.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday July 05 2018, @05:26AM
Of course it's only due diligence to examine reputation and bear it in mind. But that's not enough. Reputation is a record of the past. You've heard of pump and dump? It's not just for stocks, it happens with reputation all the time. It's so common the accountants have a special name for it, it's called 'Goodwill' and you'll find it right there on the ledgers at most companies.
So the company that has no reputation may be looking to build goodwill, the company with a great reputation might just be ready to cash some in. Caveat emptor.
Regardless of the reputation, you always want an iron-clad contract spelling out what you require and giving you a viable path forward in the event the other party fails to deliver what is promised.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?