HOA Scammer Alert

September 12, 2026 | Mark Luis Foster

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that HOA boards will need to disclose even more information to residents as a result of new legislation going into effect for HOAs on January 1. As part of a governance overhaul, the state wants us to provide contracts, discussion points, reports, and other data to residents in advance of regular board meetings. While boards are cautioned to vet the information in advance to avoid disclosing anything that is sensitive or personal, we all know how that will go.

Turns out with that new law, we have more to worry about. From Fox News:

A scammer doesn’t need to hack your homeowners association. They may only need to look at information your community already makes available. Meeting minutes, membership records and other association documents can contain details about the people who live in a community. Depending on the HOA and state law, some records may be available to association members while others could appear on an association website or another online system.

The scams against consumers are getting more and more sophisticated. While artificial intelligence has become an incredibly useful tool, it’s also a weapon in the wrong hands, and all scammers need is a little information to go a long way. According to the report, it doesn’t take much for an HOA to leak the wrong data:

HOA meeting minutes and other association records can reveal more than homeowners expect. How much information appears depends on the association and state law. Some states give HOA members broad rights to inspect association records. Sensitive disciplinary, collection and payment issues can receive additional privacy protections.

It could all be very innocent. An HOA board sends its residents a list of new people moving into the association, with street addresses listed. Or the information contains a list of volunteers and their unit numbers. You can see where this could be headed. A scammer who weaponizes a.i. can use a spoonful of info to create a gallon of trouble.

Once personal information appears publicly online, it can be indexed or copied and combined with information already collected from public records and other sources. Data brokers and people-search sites build profiles using many of those sources.

Of course, data from an HOA is certainly not the only source of problems. Answering that phone call that you don’t recognize marks you as an active target, someone willing to pick up the phone while also proving you’re a real person.  Registering online in contests, asking for more information, and even what you search online are enough dots on a piece of paper to connect a pattern. It’s a scary world out there.

The advice? This comes from Fox’s cyber-guy reporter, Kurt Knuddson:

I doubt most HOA boards are thinking about scammers when they post meeting minutes or maintain a community directory. They are focused on running the neighborhood. The problem comes when information collected for one purpose becomes useful to someone with very different intentions. That is why I would spend a few minutes searching your HOA’s name along with your own. See what a stranger can learn about you without logging in or proving they live in your community. You may be surprised by how quickly a name, home address and neighborhood can be connected. I would also ask your HOA what stays behind a resident login, what appears on the open web and what you can opt out of sharing. Laws vary by state, but there is no reason to make a scammer’s research easier than it already is. And remember, removing something from an HOA website may only solve part of the problem. Once personal information spreads to people-search sites and data brokers, cutting down those profiles can help put some distance between you and anyone trying to build a convincing story around your life.