Personal Knowledge - Identification
Personal Knowledge: There’s Nothing Casual About It!Published American Notary, Issue 2008-#2
As the incidence of fraud grows, so grows the rate at which fraud involves a notarized document.
One of the most fundamental ways for the notary to help guard against fraud is to positively identify the signer.
Many notaries assume personal knowledge is the easiest form of identification to assess—you either know someone or you don’t, right? ASN cautions, however, that you must be absolutely, unquestionably certain of the signer’s identity when relying upon personal knowledge, or else you are well advised to ask for an identification document as well.
Consider:
1. To “personally know” someone, you must have known the person over an extended period of time. Someone you met that morning, that week, that month or even that year is not necessarily “personally known.”
2. You must have had direct interaction and contact with the person over that period of time, such that you indeed “know” something meaningful about this person’s identity or life. Being a mere acquaintance isn’t enough, in our opinion. You will have needed to socialize with the person, worked with the person or lived in the same neighborhood; i.e., have some circumstance that creates ongoing, direct interaction and contact.
3. That direct interaction and contact must leave you no doubt that the person is who he says he is. If there’s reason to have even the slightest doubt, ask the signer—even when it’s someone you “know”—for a satisfactory identification document to further prove his/her identity.
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