Demand from prospective buyers to access more information about properties online during the pandemic has driven a rise in 3D tours, but viewers saw much more than they should have done in one listing.
An estate agent has apologised after a 3D tour of a house for sale in Devon was published with a substantial amount of personal information visible. Financial paperwork in the study could be read by zooming in on the high-resolution images, and family photos were left unblurred.
The paperwork included a shares dividend cheque, an insurance policy document and an invoice for a stairlift. Fowlers estate agents said the private data in the virtual tour had “slipped past” its staff and the homeowner.
The house was listed on Rightmove and the advert appeared to have been live since October 2020. Photographs of the property showed empty rooms.
Philip Fowler, the owner of the estate agency, told the BBC that his firm had withdrawn the 3D tour along with all of its others for further review and said that the company “takes our clients’ privacy very seriously”. He added that the owner of the home had given “verbal permission” for the video to be used but said the company would be “more diligent in the future”.
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Fowler said that people choosing a 3D tour to help to sell their properties were advised to put away sensitive material before the photos were taken.
Other data about the homeowners in the property included the names of their pets on a photograph — pet names are commonly used as passwords — and clues about their political views based on their choices of reading material. An asthma inhaler was also visible in one of the bedrooms.
Rightmove has upgraded its smartphone app to allow users to take virtual tours on their phones amid a surge in demand for the technology.
Virtual viewings could become a staple of the property market, with Zoopla, the home sales and rental website, running a pilot project with a number of agents to enable real-time virtual viewings on the platform.
Viewings conducted with the prospective buyer wearing a virtual reality headset that places them in the home have jumped in popularity since the first lockdown. VR viewings of new-build properties tripled in April last year, according to Zoopla.
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The Devon video was highlighted by Carole Theriault, co-host of the Smashing Security podcast. “It’s a treasure trove of private data — a veritable goldmine for identity thieves, phishers, you name it,” she said.
In a separate incident last month, house hunters in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, discovered an unwelcome feature when they looked up a property on Google Street View. The three-bedroom house, which was listed on Rightmove for £375,000, featured two armed police officers posted outside.
The sale of a £60,000 one-bedroom flat in Glasgow on Rightmove was called off after Darren Connell, a Scottish comedian and prospective buyer, spotted a police officer outside.
Connell said on Twitter: “I’ve been trying my best to save for a flat/house and found somewhere that was cheap. It made me think that something wasn’t right. So I just checked Google Maps of it and this was the first photo.”
