HS 171 - Identity Theft Protection with Adam Levin

Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

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It's my pleasure to welcome Adam Levin to the show. He is the founder of identity theft911 and credit.com. he is also the former director of New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs. And his philosophy on credit and identity, or identity theft, I should say, is rather unique. And let's just dive into that. Adam, welcome. How are you?

I'm great and thank you for inviting me.

Well, the pleasure is ours. Now, you are coming to us today from New York City, right? I am the Big Apple. Fantastic. Well, first of all, you know, let's maybe kind of take a look at someone just starting out in life. I'm right near a major university where I live in Arizona. And what are some of the money lessons that with it recently being grad season here that every graduate needs to know and then we're going to get into how this applies to everybody. But I just want to ask you that first.

Well, I think what's important for graduates to realize is that when dealing with their credit that it really is a portfolio, that it's not something that happens to you because a lot of people seem to think that credit is this dark cloud and that we are all victims of the credit system. But in fact, it's something that we actually have some control over. Credit is something that you have to look at like an investment. It's an asset. So just as you think investments and think portfolio, you also have to think credit and think portfolio. Except in credit, your credit report is your portfolio. And just like you would hope that someone would be professionally managing your money, you need to be the professional manager of your credit portfolio, which means that you have to build it, nurture it, manage it, and protect it so that credit becomes a resume and not a rap sheet.

Very good way to look at it. I love it. So actively manage and be engaged in the process of managing and improving your credit score. Yeah, Very good advice. And that is not just true for graduates, it's true for everybody. Listening. Of course. In terms of parents, when parents are talking to kids, how do they hurt them when it comes to the subject of money and credit?

Well, the problem is that we are a country that is woefully financially illiterate. We may be literate, but we're not so literate when it comes to finances.

Well, and I have to interrupt you there, I'm not so sure we're so literate in general anymore. It's a pessimistic statement. But.

You see, there's this big divide in the country and some people just are. It seems like they're checking out. It's really kind of a sad state of affairs. But lest I get on a tangent, but feel free to comment on that before you move on, if you'd like.

Well, you know, again, I mean, I've talked to a lot of parents and I've said, you know, I know that it's important when your kids are in school that they take Shakespeare and they do all of those wonderful liberal arts things that I did, but that we have to mix liberal arts education with both math and sciences and most importantly with. With things financial, or else your life will be a Shakespearean drama. And we don't need that, any of us. And we did a survey recently@credit.com where 92% of the people who responded to the survey said that they believe that there should be mandatory financial classes in high school. You'll note that there are almost none the country, there are a few states.

But you are so right. I think pretty much everybody agrees with that. But why isn't it done? Is it because the teachers aren't qualified to teach on the subject, which may well be part of the issue, or is it just that, you know, schools just weren't designed for it? There's a lot of thinking that schools were designed for kind of the industrial era, make people want to just Come to work and work on the assembly line type of thing and not think too much. I don't know. I really don't know the answer. But it certainly seems that everybody would agree with you that there needs to be some financial education.

Well, and not only that, but over 50% of the young people who responded to the survey felt that they were not properly financially prepared, which is a very scary thing. And I think that we also had a very scattershot approach in the states and with the federal government towards financial literacy education. There are, I think, roughly 16 programs all competing with each other at the federal level. Now, hopefully with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of Financial Literacy, there will be more focus to these programs. And, you know, there are some states that have been very progressive in terms of financial literacy. Most have not been. And I think we do ourselves a terrible disservice when we graduate. People who can't balance the checkbook, who don't understand the credit system. I mean, I know that, you know, Dave Ramsey likes to tell people, cut up your credit cards and live a life credit free. But unfortunately, unless you're living in a log cabin on Loon Lake, credit is such a pervasive part of all of our lives. I mean, the whole concept of credit is ubiquitous. Everywhere you turn, everything you do in one form or another, credit plays into it. Even to the point now where there are many states in the country, some have tried to limit the use of credit reports as part of the job evaluation process. Many states are evaluating it. But the truth is still a very large percentage of employers are using credit reports either for some or all of the people that they hire.

Well, and insurance companies are, too. You know, I was surprised maybe I first noticed this about eight, maybe nine years ago, that homeowners insurance people, if you just apply for homeowners insurance, they're checking your credit. And at first I thought, what does that have to do with anything? The insurance companies claim that there is a direct correlation between how good or bad one's credit is and how many claims they make against their insurance policy. Maybe implying that the claims are a stretch or outright fraudulent, I don't know. Or maybe they're just less responsible and they're not securing their home or doing things that might prevent a claim. I don't know. But that's a pretty interesting thing. I don't know if I think it's totally fair in either of those cases, but it does definitely go to your point that this is a vitally important thing and it needs to be managed like a portfolio rather than some passive event. No.

And especially if you think about it from the perspective of employers, you know, some people say it's not fair that credit reports be used. Credit scores cannot be used, by the way, only credit reports. The credit reports can be used because what if there's a problem with your credit because of a medical debt or there's a death in the family and the primary breadwinner is gone and everyone is kind of scrambling to pay the bills? What if you are the unfortunate 20% of people that were laid off in a particular company because they simply decided those with the least seniority would go? Just because you lose your job doesn't mean you can instantly change your life. For instance, if I lose my job, I can't go to the person who leased me an automobile and say, I'm really sorry, I can't afford anymore, I'm giving you your car back. And for them not to put a negative mark on my credit. Or for someone who loses a job and then ends up having to get two jobs that earn them less money than the one job they originally had. So it's, you know, in the transition phase, a lot of people can end up having difficulty paying bills, falling behind, and then having their credit ruined. And that's why if someone looks at this in any way as an evaluative tool, it's somewhat questionable unless they look deep into the credit report and then talk to the applicant to get a better understanding of what happened. Now there are some people that say that your credit report is basically the indication of how you manage your finances. I don't necessarily agree with that. I think your credit report is more an indication of your self awareness and how hard you're willing to fight for you, which is an indicator with an employee. And I'll explain in a minute, an indicator employee. Well, if that person is not willing to defend themselves and I hire them, I can't necessarily believe that they're going to defend me. And the way I say this is that your credit report is your electronic fingerprint to the world it is a reputational vehicle. That means it is incumbent upon you also as the manager of your credit portfolio to get a credit report once a year from each of the three agencies or more frequently to review it to see what's correct and what's incorrect. If it's incorrect, then you have an obligation to do whatever is necessary in order to correct it. Whether it's communicating with the creditor directly, whether communicating with the credit reporting agency. But you know, this is an extremely important vehicle for your life. It can be a wealth building tool. It can help you build security, it can help you ultimately create investments. Because the less money that you pay for money, the more money that's available to invest or to buy the things you really want to in life.

Yeah, no question about it. You know, one point I want to make on that, when you mention investing, is that back to the Dave Ramsey comment from a few minutes ago. And people, when they look at balance sheet, people think, okay, on the balance sheet, of course, you know, on one side and one column you have your assets, on the other side you have your liability. And you talk about one's credit, it should be managed like a portfolio. And I really like that metaphor. But very few people put their ability to borrow or their credit report, if you will, on the asset side of that ledger. And when it comes to investing, especially investing in my favorite asset class, income property, real estate, investing, credit is vitally important. And if it's not used, as Dave Ramsey would have you say, just don't use it. And that's fine for consumer debt. I mean, I generally agree with him. You know, most people have a problem with consumer debt and that's not investment level or investment grade debt. But certainly when it comes to mortgages and maybe to a slightly lesser degree to a business opportunity to have one's own business and expand one's own business, expand one's property portfolio and investments, credit is very important and it's an asset and it really should be used because it's an unused asset. Like unused muscles will atrophy. And your investment portfolio, your net worth will atrophy if you don't use all of the assets you have.

Oh, I completely agree with you. And that's why I try to tell people, look, your credit is an asset. Your identity is an asset. You manage both. You manage them intelligently, you watch over them. You have to develop not only sort of a culture of awareness, you have to adopt a culture of monitoring. You always have to be on the alert. You have to make sure that on a daily basis. For instance, look at your bank accounts and your credit accounts to make absolutely sure that every transaction you see is your transaction. It's also important to do that from the perspective of when I look at my credit card accounts, for instance, am I getting too close to the line? Because remember, the closer you get to your borrowing limit, the more negatively impacted your credit report and your credit score will be. So that's why it's very important to stay aware of it that way, even if you sign up. For instance, many banks and credit unions and credit card companies have programs where you can sign up for what's called transactional monitoring, and that's free, where they will notify you when certain transactions occur in your account. You can either ask to be notified for every transaction or transactions in excess of a certain amount. You just have to check with your financial institution to see if they do it. That's why buying credit and fraud monitoring programs if you think they're worth the money is a smart move, because there are certain things that will be brought to your attention by these programs that you wouldn't necessarily see on your own. And, you know, that's the whole thing, too, is in order to properly manage your credit and your identity, you have to be on the lookout to make sure that you're fully aware of what's going on in your public records as well as in your credit files. And some of these programs, they give you that ability as well. So, you know, it's all part of that culture of monitoring. Many people don't really adopt it.

Well, you know, you haven't used the words here, really, but we're really talking about identity theft is the issue here. And you have an interesting take on identity theft, don't you?

Why? It's different. And, you know, some people refer to me as Shiva, God of death.

It's not that bad. It's just realistic.

I have somebody I work with who says, when Adam appears in your waiting room, you know it's going to be a bad day. But the truth is that, you know, there are those who say that it's preventable. It isn't. You can mitigate your risk of exposure. You can monitor and you can have a damage control program. But you have to face facts. We are a world awash in data, personal data. We live on social networking sites. And unfortunately, people overshare. You can do everything right, everything they tell you to do. Don't carry your Social Security card. Limit the amount of credit and debit cards you carry. Don't give information to people that you don't know. Be wary of any email you get or photograph you get before you click on it. You can have the most advanced security software on your computer. You can even protect your smartphone, which you should, the way you protect your computer. You can shred everything in sight. You can do everything right. But if you're on the wrong database at the wrong moment, when the wrong person gains unauthorized access and 700 million consumer files have been improperly accessed since 2004. If this happens, you're toast. Because when someone gets their hands on your Social Security number, they have an option on your life. And the issue is no longer if they're going to exercise it purely when. So mitigate your risk of exposure as best you can. Adopt the culture of monitoring, which is some of the things that we talked about previously. And the third thing is damage control programs. You know, there are some people that say, oh, if you become a victim of identity theft, you can do it yourself. Sure, if it's a simple thing like someone got ahold of your credit card number or your debit card number and they haven't crawled into your bank account yet to your debit card number. They've been using the, the credit feature of it. You can call the bank or the credit union or the credit card company and have them change the number and pretty much it's the end of the story. But unfortunately, if someone, you have sort of the escalating scale here. If someone uses your debit card and crawls into your bank account and then uses that wedge to get more information about you from your bank, if someone commits true name identity theft against you and suddenly they're opening accounts in your name, if you become a victim of medical identity theft, where your information is being used to procure medical products and services and the data of the thief becomes intermingled with your medical files, your blood type changes, your allergies disappear, you could be dead. If someone commits a crime and the trail of breadcrumbs lead back to you, and suddenly you're arrested on a routine traffic stop for a busted taillight, for a warrant that was issued in another state for a crime you've never heard about, or you end up on a no fly list. These are the kinds of things that are well beyond the capacity of people to handle themselves.

Right. And so what we, what we want to make people understand there is that most people, when they think of identity theft, they think of someone stealing your financial identity, your credit score, getting a credit card in your name, getting into your bank account, something like that. But there's, there's medical identity theft, there's criminal history like the arrest you mentioned, identity theft, there's health insurance identity theft.

Tax related identity theft, which is a big one now. Right. And you know, the problem with tax related identifies, it's not just, it's not just money anymore, it's. You suddenly end up on the IRS list.

Yeah. List you don't want to be on.

And even the IRS tells you they don't want to be on, you don't want to be on their list. And they're having a nightmare. There's, they're dealing with such problems with identity theft, related tax fraud. Now it's costing the treasury billions of dollars. But as I was saying, the damage control program is critical and a lot of people go, oh, golly gee, that's really important. I got to buy some monitoring program and it's going to cost me a fortune. It's not exactly true. There are a lot of institutions throughout the country that actually offer their customers, clients, members, employees, membership in programs where someone is available to actually help you get through an identity theft situation. Whether you have a question like, I lost my purse or wallet, what do I do? I just got a breach notification letter from a company that I bought shoes from. You know, I'm a victim of true name identity theft or synthetic identity theft, any of these things you can actually call, you can get help and in many cases it's free. It can be part of an insurance policy, either homeowner or auto policy.

This just begs the question, and I don't know if you have, if you're partial to any recommendation here or if you offer this service yourself through either of your companies, but the big one we hear advertised all the time is obviously Lifelock. I mean, which service is the best and how does one choose? And maybe is a free service that you may or may not be able to find or be included in. Is that not as good as a paid service like a Lifelock that will cost you 10, 12 bucks a month for the basic and then probably $20 a month if you want their bigger package, I guess.

Well, I mean, it depends. Like identity theft911 is actually, we are a business to business, identity theft services, identity management, breach breach notification and forensic provider. Consumers cannot come to us directly. They have to have an affiliation with one of the 500 institutions that we are working with. And the easiest way to find out if you have a program, whether it BE identity theft911 or Kroll or Lifelock or, you know, call your insurance agent, speak to your bank, your credit union representative, a lot of human resource departments actually offer the program to employees of corporations. And oftentimes you may be already in it, but you won't know until you make the call and ask the question. Now, as to what service is the best. The Consumer Federation of America has a website, it's called idtheftinfo.org and what they've done is they've asked a number of identity theft service providers to give them information as to kind of the services and products that they offer. And then they give consumers a list of questions that consumers should be pondering when they're looking at different identity theft service providers as to everything from do they use statistics that can't back up? Do they tell you who the people are that are actually running the company and explain the experience of the people who are going to be working with them? Are they making promises they can't keep? Is the insurance that they're making reference to, Is it only insurance for out of pocket expenses, or is it insurance to actually cover whatever losses you suffer as a result of the identity theft, which to my knowledge, almost nobody offers that kind of insurance. But these are the kinds of things and questions that people should be asking. And that's why, you know, one should never say I can do it myself, or all hope is lost. It's really as simple as picking up a phone, going online, doing some research, asking some questions. You may be pleasantly surprised, or even if they charge for it, you might be able to find something which you deem to be more reasonably priced than one product over another. But you're only going to find out if you actually spend a little time doing some research and making a few phone calls.

Fantastic. Well, that's good advice. What else would you like people to know?

Adam? Well, you and I talked about a number of things. I think the most important thing that people always have to think about is that I want to put forward my best pace, whether it be on the identity side or on the credit side, that I have to be smart in the decisions I make. I also have to make very sure that when I communicate with anyone, I understand where they're coming from, who they represent, what they're trying to achieve, what I want from them, and whether or not it's worth it to me to give them what they want, whether it's giving additional information to a website that ultimately is going to sell your information to someone else and then you're going to get deluged by ads you don't want to. For instance, you see someone on the street registering voters, they ask you for information, you say to yourself, is this person legitimate? Are they asking me for too much? Am I better off going to the Board of Elections offices than giving it to somebody? If someone's trying to sign me up for a credit card and they're asking me for my Social Security number and they're sitting at a card table in the middle of a public area, Do I really feel safe about that? When I go to my doctor's office and they ask me for my Social Security number and I look around my doctor's office and it looks like the Keystone Cops could break in and steal everything in sight, Do I really feel comfortable giving them this kind of information? If I'm enrolling my children in Little League and they ask me for certain things, am I really willing to give it to them without knowing how safely they secure it? These are the kinds of questions that people need to be asking because this country, we've had a terrible problem with the overexposure of Social Security numbers, our addiction to Social Security numbers, and the fact that so many people have become victims of identity theft because business and government and other individuals have failed to properly protect our personal identifying information.

Well, very good point. You mentioned that the credit score is important, but you also talk about a gun score. What is that?

Well, no, it was just. This was one of those flights of fancy is during the entire debate over universal background checks. And I was disappointed that unfortunately, the legislation that had been proposed, even the compromise legislation, which I thought was pretty mild, was rejected. In fact, it was such a frenzy that occurred in Washington with people trying to stop any what they perceive to be intrusion into the rights of people to bear arms.

Well, here's kind of the problem, you know, when you listen to the other side of that. I mean, I don't disagree with the concept of background checks either. It actually seems like a good idea to me. But the problem is the stuff all gets so misused in practice. And then you've got the government keeping databases, and then the concept of, you know, if there ever is real tyranny in the country, which. Look, folks, I know none of us think it can happen here, but it can happen here. It can happen anywhere. With history as our guide. We know that it can. We all think, oh, it's never going to happen here. But that's what we think about natural disasters, too, or terrible, heinous crimes, and they happen to real people. Okay. And so that's kind of the problem with it. Just looking at the other side of that.

But.

But. Go ahead.

No, but anyway, so the. What I was actually talking about, which I, needless to say, got an extremely vociferous and negative reaction to. But I just said, you know, if one looks at the credit score, and for instance, credit score looks at your payment history, they look at your utilization rate, which is what percentage of your available credit that you're actually using, they look at the Age of your credit history, the mix of your credit accounts and then what they call increase of the number of times you apply for credit within a couple year period. And one were to craft a gun score, what would it look like? And of course once I analyzed it, I said, it's too crazy, it could never happen. But if someone said, okay, so like a credit score, your criminal record would be 35%. If there was a history of mental.

Illness the way a FICO score. That's an interesting idea.

Yeah, yeah, A history of mental illness, 30%. Your credit score, your employment history, 15%. The argument could be that if you're, if you're having a terrible time with your credit, if you're, you know, at your wits end, if you're, you're unemployed and you're, you're desperate, you might turn.

Into Michael Douglas in that movie Falling Down. Right? Michael Douglas, yeah, yeah.

You know, what is the purpose of your gun ownership now? You know, again, I am all for you. You want a gun to hunt, that's fine. I have a little question with automatic weapons and with 30 clip magazines, but hey, and then the last part was, you know, the number of guns that you own. You know, one of the questions that seems to be unanswered is when someone walks in and buys a number of weapons, what, why? You know, so these things would go into a gun store. Obviously it was not well received, it was like a trial balloon. But it was just sort of an intellectual exercise.

And certainly, I gotta admit, Adam, I don't agree with you on your points about necessarily the 30 round clips and this kind of stuff. However, I do think your idea is actually great. If we did have a background check like that, it should certainly include these different things and they should be weighted the same way, similar to the way the FICO formula works. Right?

Well, the only problem is in order to get that kind of information that in the, in the proposed guns, we.

Got to tie together a bunch of databases, right?

Well, you have to do that. And the problem is that, you know, when you start getting into areas of mental illness or you know, whether someone is in therapy or not, and you.

Know, then it's all.

Yeah, you start to. It's a question of are you violating their regulations, are you getting too much, are too intrusive, and at the end of the day a gun score would be too intrusive. However, I hope that at some point in the future we do have some form of universal background check. Example, you sell a car to your friend, neighbor or relative, you got to register it. You sell a gun to a friend, neighbor, relative, nobody knows. And these are the kinds of things that maybe somebody should know. We have a, you know, they know if you have a car. Why shouldn't they know if you have a weapon?

Well, because cars are not protected in the Constitution. They're different. They're not part of a well armed militia as it goes. We didn't, we didn't have cars back then. That's true.

But the issue is, but then again, the whole issue is the militia issue and the first license and. But all of that being said, by.

The way, folks, I gotta mention I've done some shows on this, on my holistic survival show. I've interviewed several of these gun people on both sides of the aisle. And you know, we've got some interesting, interesting shows on that for sure. And these are all issues we need to continue to struggle with and talk about.

No, and listen, you know, it is. The right to bear arms is constitutionally protected. No one is denying that. The question is, can we do better to more clearly and quickly identify people who have had mental issues. Can we do better, you know, keeping guns out of the hands of people who would use them for the wrong reasons? And this is a really tough issue that's going to be debated probably for generations before we come up with an answer because the views are so strong on either side.

I definitely agree with you there. Well, hey, just circling back, I think we kind of covered that. That was sort of the last thing. But give out your websites if you would and tell people where they can take advantage of some of the resources you mentioned and learn more about the subject matter.

Oh, great. Well, for credit, education, advocacy products and services, it's credit.com and identity theft. 911 again is provided through institutions. We have about 500 of them representing about 17 and a half million households. And the website there is idt911.com fantastic.

And Adam, just one other thing before you go. Did you want to mention anything about some of these credit report sites that people constantly hear advertised? Are some of those a bit of a trap where they obligate you to other things or, you know, I've heard some negative Comments about, like freecreditreport.com this is a very common radio commercial you hear. Are there some things consumers should be aware of with some of these credit sites?

Well, first of all, if a credit site is offering something for free, where they really lay out free credit report, and under federal law, they actually have to first let you know that the site that most people think about when they think of free credit reports is annualcreditreport.com and that is the site that is mandated by the federal government where you can get a free copy of a credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies, Spurion, Equifax and TransUnion. There are sites like Credit.com and others that not only offer you free access to information that's on your credit report, but also provide you a score. Like credit.com for instance. You can actually get a free credit score that there's no strings attached. And that score is then compared to the Vantage score and the FICO score, which are the two main scoring models. There are other sites that have different variations of that. The one thing that some people get caught up in is when they see a credit score, they think it's an absolute. And what they don't realize is each of us probably has at any one time between 80 and 120 credit scores, because there are different lenders in different categories that have different criteria that are used to tweak credit scoring models. So that's going on. So what you really need to do is look at a credit score not necessarily as an absolute or as they would say in Pirates of the Caribbean, it's not exactly a code, it's more like guidelines. So it will give you an idea whether your credit is good, excellent, fair, poor. These are the things you need to have a better understanding of. And I think credit scores, it's very important for actually people to have access to them. There is law on the books right now. It's known as the Udall Amendment, which is an amendment to the Dodd Frank act which said that in the event you are rejected for credit or you receive an unfavorable rate compared to those with good credit, you are entitled to a copy of whatever credit score was used in that decision making process. We have gone to washington@credit.com and suggested and others support the concept that that be expanded one step further, which is whether you are accepted, rejected, or receive an unfavorable rate, that you should see a copy of the or get the credit score that was used in the process. Because I think the more people that are actually aware of their credit scores, the more if they're good, they want to know how I can keep them good. And if they're not good, I want to know what I did wrong and what I need to do better. So I think that's all part of the process of raising the level of financial literacy in this country.

It sure is. Well, Adam Levin, thank you so much for joining us today and keep getting the word out there. Okay?

I appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me.

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