Via Kable: “The Land Registry has pulled potentially sensitive documents from its online service. As from midnight on 5 November 2007, online access to documents such as mortgage deeds and leases will be removed. Members of the public wishing to inspect or have copies of any such documents can do so by applying in writing to Land Registry. The move followed a report in The Daily Mail that criminal gangs have stolen £12m over the past two years by exploiting loopholes in the website. They gained access to documents such as title deeds to make it possible to sell properties they did not own.”

It’s a pity legitimate users of Land Registry information will no longer have access to these details, I guess, but what were sensitive documents like these doing lying around in the open air in the first place? Did any review of this take place?

After the fact, the Land Registry tried to ‘put this in perspective,’ saying that the £12 million in fraud was a small percentage of the fee income it generated.

WAKE UP. The £12 million in fraud in all probability represented a very large percentage of the total wealth of the individuals who were defrauded, each of whom had to go through a long and laborious compensation exercise and probably had to get the services of a solicitor to help them. Of course it had minimal impact on the Land Registry. It’s not their money. It’s not their information. It’s not their privacy.