Are you a victim of Land Records Fraud?

Can you imagine that up to 50% of land records in a country could be forged? That is mind-boggling. Document security gains importance in developing countries more than ever. When Sri Lanka’s Registrar General’s Office states that almost 40 – 50% of the land records in that country are forged documents, it is no more a question of an aberration. It is a systemic failure, that encourages forgery of these records. Further, the Registrar General, N. C. Withanage says that it has been proven that over 1/5th of the birth certificates, marriage certificates and death certificates in the country are also forged.

https://www.newsfirst.lk/2019/03/17/50-of-land-deeds-in-sri-lanka-forged-registrar-general/

This definitely is the reason for computerisation of records at a bare minimum. However, going by global experience, although computerisation may reduce the number of fraudulent deals and increase efficiency, just computerisation by itself will not solve the issue of the forged documents being used for malicious purposes that require third-party verification be it land records, birth certificates, marriage certificates or death certificates.

Secure QR Code printed Land Records - Computerisation of Land Records on Steroids

Contrary to belief, making land records secure and easily verifiable is not too complex with Qryptal QR Code Document Security. In the case above for example, when government authorities embrace a QR code-based document security solution approach, the Land Records department will generate and print a simple and secure tamper proof QR code on the land record deed or for that matter any important document related to the record. This can be done for both electronic and physical document formats and any third-party would easily be able to validate the authenticity of these documents online or offline. However, it should be emphasised here that it’s important for the QR code to be a secure one which only the issuer of the document is authorized to generate. There have been moves to use simple non-secure QR codes which don’t solve the problem of tampering (as anyone can generate them) and in fact, may give a false impression of security. Pls read our earlier blogpost on this

Our proposed solution has two components

1. Have a document generation system which generates secure documents that can only be done by an authorised issuer. Hence it helps to prevent unauthorised manipulation or tampering.

2. An easy and simple mechanism to validate such issued documents that can be easily used by third-parties to authenticate and trust the information.

With Secure QR Code generation from Qryptal, this problem is tackled by making sure that all such documents are system generated centrally and the information on them is captured in the form of a Qryptal Secure QR code before it gets printed either physically or electronically. In addition, the Secure QR code will also have the digital signature of the issuing department so that unauthorized modifications can be identified and stopped.

This can be then validated by other officers or third parties to whom it is presented with the help of an authorised App or a Validation Server. The simple visual representation of a QR code encapsulating the details is shown here. On scanning the code all the details contained inside it are visible for verification.

Secure QR code verification for land records using such a system offers significant benefits:

• It works for both printed and electronic documents.

• The secure QR code can only be generated by the issuing department and cannot be faked or tampered by anyone else.

• It allows self-service verification of documents by third parties

• Strengthens personal data protection as information is accessed through the QR code and using an authorised app only. Also, since the information is stored inside the QR code, there may not be any requirements to get into tripartite information sharing issues.

• Data domicile issues may be minimal as no online infrastructure is required.

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