No more online property deeds?

The Land Registry has stopped it's online property deeds service.

I have used the service myself and it was very good. However, it appears that the service was open to fraud.

The fear was that people would register to use the site, pay for and download property deeds, and then use these to make re-mortgage applications without the property owner's knowledge.

Apparently, this was very rare - the figures cited are £12million paid out in compensation, against £870million collected in fees - but the risks were such that it was decided to stop the service.

It has also been pointed out, that many would-be fraudsters fall at the lender's hurdle, as the checks in place to prevent fraud, money-laundering etc, picked up erroneous applications. Which is good to hear.

Of course, people can still get deeds, but they must once again apply in writing to do so, as was the case before the online system.

Personally, I am fed up with all these things that are made so much more difficult because of the risk of fraud. Things that should make life easier - particularly through the use of online technologies - are just new opportunities to theives and fraudsters, and that means that we don't see the benefits of them.

However, I don't know the answer to the problem. I'm sure something could be done which would safeguard our individual data security, but I don't know how that might work. I am holding out hope though! If there are any boffins reading this who work on making the internet etc more secure, please know that your work is appreciated (at least by me).