Posted by John Charles Gober on 8/3/13 3:18pm
Msg #479182

Electronic Notary Journal

Hey All,

Has anyone has any experience with these? I have yet to find any software that will accept photos and esignatours other than Digisign (already purchased but very little support for the small time notary.

Thanks.

Johnny Five Toes

Reply by ToniK on 8/3/13 3:23pm
Msg #479183

I can't remember the company that did a seminar through VLTA. Settle ware? Notarycam? I think not sure. But I haven't really looked into it even though I applied for my electronic notary commission a month ago.

Reply by MW/VA on 8/3/13 3:56pm
Msg #479186

Does the SOC have any info available on electronic

journals? It's so like this state to set this up without proper info on support.

Reply by HisHughness on 8/3/13 11:06pm
Msg #479202

Indeed, the SOC does have electronic journal information

It's called the Secretary of the Commonwealth's 'Here's Our Poop,' or SOC HOP.

Glad to help.

Reply by VT_Syrup on 8/4/13 10:56am
Msg #479211

Re: Does the SOC have any info available on electronic

The SOC website has a notary page at

http://www.commonwealth.virginia.gov/notary/notary.cfm?CFID=26983128&CFTOKEN=e7db827d8d7c940-468583FC-DC98-3F2F-09D118BB919DF232

About three-quarters of the way down the page there is a link to "Electronic Notarization Assurance Standard", a PDF document, which is located at

http://www.commonwealth.virginia.gov/notary/VAe-NotarizationStandard2013Version1.0.pdf

The electronic journal requirements are spelled out at section 1.3, "Electronic Record of Notarial Acts". These requirements are stringent. A previous poster said he/she called the SOC's office and was told a spreadsheet would be sufficient. It wouldn't.

Requirement (a) is easy enough; some kind of authentication is required before viewing, printing, or editing the record. A password on an Excel spread sheet would meet this requirement.

Requirement (b) is much more difficult. It states:

"...an electronic record of notarial acts shall: ...(b) Not allow a record entry to be deleted or altered in content or sequence by the electronic notary or any other person after a record of the electronic notarization is entered and stored."

Many notaries are sole proprietors and are the owners of their computers. As the owners, they will have an administrator account, and normally can edit any document on the system. For example, if the record were kept as a spread sheet, and it had an entry for August 1, then an entry for August 3, there is nothing to stop the notary from backdating a document for August 2 and inserting a row in the spreadsheet between the August 1 and 3 entries. Essentially there is no way to overcome this except to get some trusted third party to verify that the notary has not altered the document except by adding new entries to the bottom of the list, in chronological order. One way to do this is to electronically sign the record after each entry, and apply a trusted time stamp to the record after each change. Wikipedia has an article about trusted time stamps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_time_stamp

Requirement (d) means that if the record is kept by an online service, there must be some kind of authentication of the notary so that the employees of the online service cannot change the record, only the notary can (and as indicated above, even the notary can't change existing entries, only add new entries).

The Virginia notary handbook describes the items that must be contained in an entry in an electronic notary journal, on page 8. You will notice all the information is just text; there is no need to capture photographs, fingerprints, or signatures.

Disclaimer: This post is provided for purposes of general discussion; anyone contemplating any activity in this arena should obtain advice from a qualified professional such as a lawyer or professional engineer licensed in Virginia.

Reply by John Charles Gober on 8/3/13 4:54pm
Msg #479192

My understanding from the Commonwealth is that a simple spreadsheet will do. I want something a little more secure and robust without breaking the bank.

John

Reply by anotaryinva on 8/3/13 5:50pm
Msg #479195

John, ask this guy, http://www.oncallnotary-va.com/

Reply by MW/VA on 8/4/13 12:02pm
Msg #479215

Good luck to you on the electronic side of things. I'm not

going to get involved at the point. For me, there wouldn't be much application & I see it as applying to primarily government & military applications. Woe to those internet guru's that are misusing it.

Reply by VT_Syrup on 8/4/13 12:43pm
Msg #479218

Re: Electronic notary journal -- marketing

I made some technical comments above, but this comment is about marketing.

In my opinion, the chief reason to use electronic signatures and electronic notarization is not speed, it's controlling the workflow. Consider the signing of a note and mortgage as an example. With paper, the package might come back with a date on the note by the borrower's signature, when the lender doesn't want that. The pages of the mortgage might lack an initial on page 11, and page 12 might be missing. The notary might have attached a loose certificate to the mortgage that the title company doesn't want.

Electronic signing and notarization could be designed in a way that everything is lock-step. A sequence might look something like this:

1. The note, stored on the title company's server, is signed by the borrower typing his name in a box. There is no way to cross out and change anything in the note. The name typed in by the borrower is compared to what the title company is expected. If the title company expects John Patrick Jones and the signer types John P Jones, an error message flashes on the screen and the process won't go forward until the signer types what is expected.

2. The mortgage, stored on the title company's server, is signed by the borrower in the same way as the note; initials on each page are not needed because the electronic notarization will insure that no pages have been swapped and no alterations of any kind have been made.

3. The signed mortgage is transmitted to the notary's computer, the notary signs it with his digital certificate, and transmits it back to the title company's server. The title company's server examines the document to be sure the only thing that has been done to it is adding the notary's digital signature, and that the digital signature is exactly what the title company expects. The process won't move forward until this is done.

The point is that electronic notarization will be tightly integrated with the title company's system. So there is no point in a notary going out and getting an electronic notarization system in hopes of finding someone who will want the notary to use it; the client will want to use the client's own system. So from a marketing point of view, you want to identify a client who wants digital notarization, and then use whatever system the client has decide on.

Reply by Linda_H/FL on 8/4/13 2:46pm
Msg #479223

Re: Electronic notary journal -- marketing

??

"2. The mortgage, stored on the title company's server, is signed by the borrower in the same way as the note; initials on each page are not needed because the electronic notarization will insure that no pages have been swapped and no alterations of any kind have been made.

3. The signed mortgage is transmitted to the notary's computer, the notary signs it with his digital certificate, and transmits it back to the title company's server. The title company's server examines the document to be sure the only thing that has been done to it is adding the notary's digital signature, and that the digital signature is exactly what the title company expects. The process won't move forward until this is done"


Do I see an absence of personal appearance here? If borrowers are in the presence of the notary, I don't see the need for the separate transmission to the notary.

JMO

Reply by VT_Syrup on 8/4/13 3:19pm
Msg #479224

Re: Electronic notary journal -- marketing

The original poster is in Virginia, so there might be an absence of presence in the same physical location, although the borrower would at least have to appear by two-way audio-visual link. But my point still applies in other states.

Most likely, the signer will be signed on to the title company's web site, and the opportunity to sign will be presented by that web site. After the borrower signs, there is a signed mortgage present on the title company's web site, but the notary must sign the acknowledgement certificate in a way that is under the sole control of the notary. Maybe a way could be devised for the notary to sign the certificate on the title company's web site in a way that it would be impossible for anyone at the title company to forge the notary's digital signature. But a more straightforward way would be to send the document to the notary so the notary could sign it on his own computer, which is under his sole control, then send it back.

Virginia requires that the notary's digital certificate conform to the X.509 standard. I don't know how the notary could claim to have sole control of his digital certificate if the title company had physical position of his secret key. Basically you'd have a system where the title company would be saying "well, we do have possession of the secret key, and we could 'wiretap' the notary as he enters his password to gain access to the secret key, but we promise we won't do that, cross our heart and hope to die."

Reply by Linda_H/FL on 8/4/13 4:15pm
Msg #479230

I don't see loan signings being done under VA's

web signing protocol. Not only is electronic commission required, and probably electronic journal....but videotaping of the entire process is required and the notary must keep the videotape for 5 years...

Co's dont' want to pay $100 now...I know I'd charge twice that to do a web based electronic loan signing with video recording and recordkeeping for 5 years...

JMO

Reply by VT_Syrup on 8/4/13 4:47pm
Msg #479231

Re: I don't see loan signings being done under VA's

I think entities that are the least bit conservative, such as title companies and mortgage lenders, willl wait until several court cases involving Virginia's web protocol are decided before they begin to think about allowing it.

Reply by MW/VA on 8/4/13 7:41pm
Msg #479239

I don't know that the electronic notarization here in VA

applies to loan signings. BTW, I had a refi loan signing the other day for an AZ property. These folks commented about why this wasn't done electronically, since they have bought & sold homes that way. I know it's out there in the future, maybe sooner than later, but for now they want a strong paper trail where loans are concerned. Just my .02