Tenant screening and protecting their information

[Laura Hamilton]

Hi,

My husband and I are about to rent out our first investment property and need some advice, please.

Currently we're checking out our prospective tenant's information, including previous landlords and employers. To receive information from the previous landlords we have the tenant's authorization on the rental application to do that, but I wonder if it's normal practice to scan the papers and email the information to the previous landlords (so they can see the application and tenant's authorization to do that)? Why I'm asking this is because the application obviously includes their SSN and other private information and personally I always try to minimize sharing this kind of information about myself in an email. 

Yet, I wouldn't want to drive around showing the paper personally to the previous landlords either. And I don't have a fax, so can't fax it.

Thank you in advance for the advice!

Laura