One of two recent reports highlights online and social media usage growth among mortgage shoppers. The other looks at some of the risks faced by consumers who use social media.
A recent publication from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Portland, Oregon, division
warned consumers about making posts to social media when on vacation.
According to the FBI, in addition to alerting burglars they are away, consumers’ location information can be used to fool family members into paying ransoms. Consumers also can become phishing and malware targets through fake travel alerts.
“Social media is often the fastest and easiest way to communicate — that is make your friends jealous — when you are away,” the FBI said. “But hitting ‘submit’ on that post it is not always the safest way to go.”
The FBI recommends
using the most-secure privacy settings on social media accounts to ensure only friends can view posts. It also suggests resisting the urge to gain more followers and instead accept friend requests only from people you’ve physically met.
In addition, consumers should wait until returning home before posting vacation photographs, avoid posting flight or hotel information,
and skip checking in from the vacation locations.
Mortgage borrowers who closed on their loans during the past two years were 3.7 times more likely to find their lender through social media or online research as they were five to 10 years ago.
Those findings were reported by Velocify in the The Digital Mortgage Experience: A Study of Shifting Borrower Expectations.
Velocify said the report was based on a survey of 500 new borrowers.
The study indicated 43 percent of the loans were taken out by Generation X borrowers. Another 29 percent of the borrowers were considered Millennials, and the remaining 28 percent were Baby Boomers.
