Identity Theft Speaker Discusses Spies on your computer on Fox @McAfeeConsumer

Robert Siciliano. They're watching you. They see your every move.

They see your every move. That's the goal of crooks who sneak into our computers. Scarlett Johansson had some nude photos of herself on her computer. A hacker managed to grab them. He then sent them to gossip websites. Jay-Z, Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian weren't happy to find their Social Security numbers and credit card numbers posted on a Russian website. So how do the crooks get this information, and is there anything we can do to protect ourselves? Robert Siciliano is a consultant for the internet security company McAfee. They get paid to stymie hackers and scammers. So how do they get in and get my stuff?

Well, they get in because consumers may not have antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, or a firewall set up. Ah, la di da da da.

Too fast. When you say antivirus, I think of these malware things that just wreck the computer, but now the antivirus stuff is to keep the crooks off. Correct.

So if you have proper security in place, right, you have layers of protection that's designed to keep the bad guys out. And a lot of consumers—

There's a program you pay for and it searches your computer for bad guys.

Correct.

And keeps them out?

In general, a good antivirus program is going to keep the bad guys out, along with making sure that the consumer's themselves are engaging in the right behavior or not the wrong behavior that would invite an attack.

All right, we're going to go more into details about what you can do to protect yourself shortly, but let's first talk about what gets taken from people.

So bad guys are looking for the Social Security number on your devices, right? So they can use that to open up new accounts under your name, new credit cards, bank accounts, and so on. Or they're looking for existing account numbers.

People have lost $500 million this year.

Yeah.

And yet, you know, you work for McAfee. The company makes money selling this stuff. The global warming scientists hype global warming. The Department of Homeland Security hypes terrorism. You're probably exaggerating this threat. It hasn't happened to people I know.

I get emails from people every single day who are victims of these crimes. They essentially feel like a puppet, and the bad guy is the puppeteer. And generally, these people are losing thousands of dollars. They're hemorrhaging money, and they're losing a lot of sleep, as well.

The credit card companies sort of protect you. They say if you report it to us, most you can lose is $50, and you have time to report it. A bank account, you have less time.

Mm-hmm.

So consumers have 2 days by federal law to report any fraud when your bank account is compromised. They have 60 days to report fraud if your credit card is compromised. However, some studies show that 9 out of 10 consumers don't even pay attention to their credit card statements, paying the monthly minimum, and so they end up paying for the vacation of of an identity thief.

When I throw out my device, I erase it. That protects me?

That may not be enough. I was able to buy 30 devices off of Craigslist within a 30-mile radius of my home, right? Laptops, desk— desktops, netbooks, notebooks, iPhones, iPads.

Craigslist meaning somebody sold it and presumably they wiped it clean before they gave it to you.

I asked them if they wiped it clean, and all of them said they did, and on half of the devices I was able to find enough data to steal identities even even after they erase the hard drives or reset it back to factory.

Why? I thought erased means erased.

Yeah, because of the way the technology is built, there are these partitions, these additional closets, let's say, that there's still stuff stored in there, like as a backup. And so bad guys know how to find that when you recycle it or you throw it away, or when you even resell it. So you have to really destroy that drive or use a shredder basically to eliminate the data.

You say ignore phishing. Phishing with PH.

Yeah, anytime you receive an email or even a text message that says, you know, click this link or update your information, generally that's designed to trick you, to spoof you into entering personal information.

If it comes from somebody I know, it's okay to open that?

No. See, I never—

But how do I communicate with people?

Well, people that you know, like if you and I are having dialogue, right, then I might click links and I'll engage in that. But if I get an email from my bank saying, hey, your statement's ready, Click on this link to access your statement. I'm not going to click that link. And it's so convenient for us simply to click that link, and bad guys know that. Whereas if you were to maybe type it into the address bar or go to your favorites menu or use a password manager, these extra steps that you might take protect you.

And you say slurp up the information. You say, B, if you use a wireless network, you have to have encryption.

Yes. So public Wi-Fi, right? Airports, hotels, out in the open. On a free Wi-Fi, I can see your data as it's transmitting through the air.

All right. But if I'm on free Wi-Fi, I just set I don't give out my credit card numbers that way.

Well, some people do, right?

So as long as I don't, I'm okay. They can't crawl into the computer and get other stuff.

Your operating system is susceptible to injections of code, you know, where a bad guy can implant a virus on your machine. Yeah, they can get full remote access to your device.

And finally, change the password and don't use the same password.

Correct.

Nobody does that. I mean, we all tend to use the same kind of thing.

Look, if you have the same password password for all of your accounts, with the same username, if one account gets hacked, all of those accounts can get hacked, okay? So when the bad guy gets access to your email, he owns you. So you want to change up your passwords, uppercase, lowercase, you know, numbers and so forth, and have different passwords for different accounts.

How do you remember them?

A password manager. A password manager that goes—

So the crook finds that on my computer, he's totally got me.

Well, there's encryption there, you know, you mask your passwords, but look, you have to have layers of protection. The more you do, the more secure you're going to be. If you do nothing, If you throw your hands up in the air, then you are next on the list.

Robert, thank you. It's good advice. Coming up, spies I found on my computer.