In consultation with real estate boards across the province, your Board is temporarily halting reciprocal lockbox access for REALTORS® who are not members of either REBGV or the Fraser Valley or Chilliwack real estate boards. REALTORS® from the other real estate boards in BC will now need to contact their respective board first if they want access to one of your lockboxes.

We’re making this change to help secure the lockbox system in response to recent criminal activity where hackers have gained access to members' email addresses, logged into their lockbox accounts and ultimately accessed homes listed for sale.

These security incidents have resulted in as many as 20 known attempted lockbox breaches, two cases of property theft and other instances of keys being stolen from lockboxes. One recent case at a strata property resulted in a Realtor having to pay more than $5,000 to have the building rekeyed.

Please exercise extreme vigilance with your email and lockbox security to help prevent further incidents. You can do this by taking extra steps to verify the identity of those you're working with and following the security recommendations below.

Since email is the hackers' primary point of entry, and they're sophisticated enough to impersonate a Realtor, we recommend you follow these safe practices:

• Be guarded when communicating through Touchbase. Take extra steps to authenticate unknown/unfamiliar senders by double-checking the contact info with their brokerage, the Board office, Google, etc.
• Ensure the phone number and email address associated with your Touchbase account is correct. Reset your password.
• Change your email and Sentrilock account passwords. Do not use the same password for both accounts.
• Do not generate One-Day Showing codes. A perpetrator who gains access to an unsuspecting Realtor’s account can use a Touchbase account to request a One-Day Showing Code to gain access to your lockbox.
• Don’t open links from unknown senders or from those whose identity you can’t confirm.
• Be suspicious of any official looking email message that asks for personal or financial information.
• Before clicking on a link, see if it’s safe or not by hovering over the link to see where it directs you.
• Be suspicious of emails or text messages sent to you in general. Check where it came from or if there are spelling or grammatical errors.
• Check your email account to see if your emails are being forwarded without your knowledge. If you don’t know how to do this, contact your email provider.
• Malicious links can also come from friends who have been infected too, so be careful.

We’re in contact with police and are meeting regularly with senior representatives from our lockbox supplier and our counterparts from BC’s other real estate boards to address this situation. Our goal is to counter potential threats and secure the lockbox system without unduly disrupting your day-to-day operations.

To achieve this, we've taken the following actions:

• Halting reciprocal lockbox privileges: Automatic reciprocal lockbox privileges have been temporarily suspended for all BC Real Estate Boards except between REBGV and the Fraser Valley and Chilliwack real estate boards. Access to properties in the other boards in the province can be obtained only by calling your Board office, prior to planning a visit to show properties outside the Lower Mainland.
• Verifying Touchbase updates/changes: Board staff are now individually verifying all phone number changes that members are making on their Touchbase account.
• One-device policy: Along with other BC boards, we’ve instituted a one-device policy with Sentrilock, so that only one device can be registered per member at a time.
• Limiting new devices: Members who need to register a new device must first contact the Board to verify their identity.
• Verifying account updates: No changes or updates can be made to your REBGV account settings without Board staff verifying your identity first.
• Multi-factor authentication: Discussions are underway with Sentrilock and Clareity to incorporate multi-factor authentication measures for account access as soon as possible.

If you experience a lockbox breach or act of vandalism, please contact:

• local law enforcement;
• the Managing Broker of your brokerage office; and
• REBGV at 604-730-3090.

We appreciate your cooperation as we work to enhance the security of our lockbox system. We’ll continue to provide updates as we learn more.