Taking pictures of Drivers License

Beginner's Questions
1

Do you take the pic on your phone?

2

The business policy I created for this is to never take images of any current government-issued (CGI) photo IDs with my iPhone => too much risk/liability.

The signers may elect to take an image of their CGI photo IDs and email it to their lender/title company.

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I used to but I’ve recently stopped. It’s a security issue, IMO. I don’t want that kind of stuff own my personal phone, too much liability. Also, it makes some borrowers very uncomfortable.

This requirement for signing agents to collect copies of IDs is so frustrating. Even when I tell the borrowers beforehand that I’ll need to collect copies, I’ll show up and they’ll tell me they forgot. Or their printer stopped working. Or they give me some insanely blurry copy, you can’t read anything on the IDs, or it’s cut off on one side.

From now on, if they don’t have the copy ready for me, I’m just going to instruct them to send a copy/picture to their lender/title ASAP. :woman_shrugging:

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Agree with cNsa5 - I won’t either If they don’t have copies ready they are free to take pics of their own IDs on their own phones and send it to title/escrow - but I’m not walking away with that PII on my personal phone.

And addressing another statement I saw in another thread, nor would I allow signers to take a picture of mine


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5

I’m going to agree that having the signer provide a copy is the safest option, however a portable scanner is your best bet if the signer doesn’t have a copy and doesn’t want / know how to email it to the lender/title. I’ve got one with a microcard that can be formatted and wiped clean regularly.

If you’re in a pinch, Adobe Scan will save the DL as a pdf scan in a different folder than camera pics and is easier to completely delete from your phone whereas pics usually have a lot of “tagging” information attached to them.

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6

I heard that some SS send your info to the client

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I do it every time when borrowers do not have copies of ID’s ready, print them at my office, send them with docs, after that erase them immediately, no liability.

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Thank you! This is a great alternative, countsjd:

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I use cam scanner if I need to take a copy of their ID, but there has been so much talk about that now I don’t know if I should. But at least with that app it doesn’t save on your phone at all.

10

Whats wrong with taking a pic of a DL??? Just delete after.

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11

There’s a lot of meta-data that gets saved with every pic and video and quite a bit of that data(if not the whole pic) can or will get saved to the cloud service your phone carrier uses as backup if you lose/break your phone. Even saving them on an SD card might not keep them from being uploaded depending on your carrier.
Additionally, deleting from the DCIM folder, doesn’t always delete it from the “thumbnail” folder.
Deleting it from the Gallery/Photo app definitely doesn’t it clear it from the Recently Deleted folder which holds onto your pic for 30 days before finally deleting it. Should your phone get stolen or lost, you’ll have exposed multiple signer’s information to whomever finds it, especially if they know how to dig deep.

Pdf’s and docs aren’t as important to backup since most people are only interested in keeping their “15sec of shame” proofs so pics/videos/texts are prioritized. Pdfs/docs also don’t have metadata attached and, when deleted, are more thoroughly wiped, especially if on an SD card.
Will it keep your last signer safe if you haven’t had a chance to delete it? No, but the ones before that were deleted will be.

Finally, not only are pdfs smaller in file size, most companies don’t want jpgs so you’d end up having to convert it anyway.
Sorry for the massive message. I looked into this when I first started to see where the legality of it was.

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I persoanlly am not a I.T guru so i just snap, print and delete.

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You can scan images and they will automatically save as a pdf if you have an iPhone. Just open the Notes app. Hit the bottom right (New note). Next hit the camera option and choose (Scan Document).

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This matter of taking a snap of the borrowers’ ID has come up recently . I have decided to NOT take photos of IDs going forward. Too risky with privacy issues and cloud retention of images that I don’t want to have hanging around. I will be suggesting that the signers send whatever they want to provide directly to TC/EO/Lender/whoever. I am out of that loop.

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15

No. I never take a picture. I always have them take the pic and send it to me. That way you can always say they sent it to you.

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16

I use an app called JotNot. I scan the ID, email it/upload to SnapDocs, then delete. I’ve found that not once has a signer had a copy of his/her ID’s ready at signing. They all “forgot”

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I picked up a cheap Point-n-Shoot camera to taken photos of documents and DLs. These never reach the “cloud” and are easy to clean off the camera’s memory card.

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When I was in banking, we were told by headquarters that taking photos of customers’ identification was not permitted. Privacy was paramount and, frankly, bank personnel could be trusted with capturing a customer’s ID. Being in fraud investigation, I quite agreed.

Now I receive signing orders that ‘insist’ that I, the notary, obtain photographs of the signers’ ID. Here’s a sample clipped right from the order:

Please obtain a copy of the client’s ID. Scan a copy of the ID’s into the file when closing out. This is required,

Unh-unh, ain’t doin’ it no mo.

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One of the financial institutions I handled about 100 closing for last year always photocopies the signers DLs. I don’t, the lender does.

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They’re taking an awful chance, seems to me. If they are regulated by the FDIC, FRB or OCC, they will eventually be discovered and have a major problem.

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