Land Trust Company Modernizes Privacy Protection Tool for Today's Digital Threats

“The most doxxed piece of information is somebody’s personal residence,” explains David Lanciotti, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at The Land Trust Company. In an era of rampant identity theft and digital exposure, this 125-year-old company is transforming a traditional legal instrument into a modern shield against 21st-century privacy threats.

The former Chicago Title Land Trust Company, now rebranded as The Land Trust Company, is bringing land trusts—once primarily known in Illinois and a few other states—to a national audience with enhanced protection against both traditional vulnerabilities and emerging digital threats.

What Is a Land Trust and Who Needs One?

At its core, a land trust creates a privacy barrier around property ownership. “With the proliferation of information on the internet, people are trying to keep certain things off the internet. One thing a lot of people want off the internet is their personal residence,” Lanciotti explains. “It only really took your personal address off the public records. You would only see Chicago Title as the owner of the property.”

While celebrities and high-profile individuals have long used land trusts for privacy, the tool serves diverse needs:

“We’ve always had this core business of high-profile people, athletes, celebrities—that’s the sexy part of our business,” notes Lanciotti. “The other end is the person who’s been working for 30 years, owns their own house, has paid off the mortgage. They’re ready to do some estate planning.”

For real estate investors, the privacy benefit is particularly valuable. “If you think about a real estate investor, they have tenants. They don’t want their tenants to know where they live,” points out Del Denney, Director of Business Development. “You see a lot of real estate investors using this just to protect their own identity, making sure that tenants don’t knock on the door.”

The TripleShield: Expanding Protection Beyond Public Records

The company’s innovative TripleShield Protection Plan represents a significant evolution, combining the traditional land trust with digital privacy tools and proactive fraud monitoring.

“We’ve been doing land trusts for 125 years and we’re more or less reinventing it,” explains Denney. “We’ve layered this cybersecurity, title fraud element to it as well, to bring it into the modern world.”

The three components work together to create comprehensive protection:

1. The Land Trust Shield – The traditional legal structure that removes personal information from public property records
2. The Data Privacy Shield – Digital protection powered by DeleteMe
3. The Title Fraud Shield – Proactive monitoring and prevention of property fraud

The partnership with DeleteMe, the industry leader in personal data protection and creator of the Privacy-as-a-Service category, significantly enhances the offering. Founded by privacy expert and entrepreneur Rob Shavell in 2009, DeleteMe has removed over 100 million individual pieces of personal data from the internet.

“DeleteMe is a data scrubbing company, and it really is a great fit,” explains Lanciotti. “We could take the information off the public record, right off the county recorder. We couldn’t take all this other stuff off the internet. That’s exactly what DeleteMe does.”

The process is thorough and far-reaching: “DeleteMe basically goes out to 810 different data brokers, and they scrub the Internet to take your information off—your public address, financial details, family details, phone numbers,” Denney elaborates.

The Growing Threat of Title Fraud

The TripleShield’s protection comes at a crucial time, as property fraud schemes grow increasingly sophisticated.

“Title fraud is just a form of identity theft,” Lanciotti explains. “It’s the latest mutation of identity theft.” Even Elvis Presley’s Graceland was reportedly targeted by fraudsters attempting to steal property through falsified documents.

Certain properties face higher risks: “Two of the big targets for title fraud are vacant property and vacation properties, or properties that aren’t regularly occupied,” warns Lanciotti. “Something where nobody’s keeping an eye on it.”

What makes today’s threat landscape particularly concerning is the technical sophistication of modern fraudsters. “Fraudsters are getting smarter every day, and they’re using AI,” Denney emphasizes. “It’s not some crazy guy in an alley—they’re very smart. And it’s not just domestic, but international as well. There are offices full of criminals actively looking to find vulnerable people.”

The company’s approach is deliberately proactive rather than reactive. “We do not wait for fraud to occur,” states Denney. “We are proactively scanning the internet… We proactively scan MLS to make sure there isn’t a fraudulent listing.”

National Expansion and Accessibility

The Land Trust Company’s rebranding signals its ambition to make this once-regional legal tool available nationwide. “What we’re excited about is really our nationwide expansion,” says Denney. “That was part of the reason for the press release and why we changed our name, to be on a national scale.”

The expansion is happening in phases, with Florida set to launch in March as part of the company’s strategic rollout plan.

Despite the sophisticated protection offered, the service is surprisingly affordable. “People think it’s this really expensive product, but it’s just for a few hundred dollars a year, you can get all kinds of protection,” Denney explains.

For real estate professionals and investors looking to learn more, the company offers educational resources. “We just put out a land trust guide that’s available online,” notes Lanciotti. “It’s a very nice, quick summary, probably a 15-minute read.”

With its unique combination of traditional legal protection and cutting-edge digital safeguards, The Land Trust Company is positioning itself at the intersection of real estate, estate planning, and cybersecurity—making a once-niche legal instrument both accessible and essential for today’s property owners.

For more information, visit LandTrustCompany.com and JoinDeleteMe.com