Robert Siciliano breaks down identity theft in Houston, where 40 new victims are reported weekly. Thieves mostly use stolen identities for credit card fraud, getting personal data through fake IDs, public records, and hacking. He explains why credit cards are safer than debit cards and walks through daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly steps to protect yourself.
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He is the man with the plan. It is my great pleasure and honor to introduce our speaker this evening, Robert Siciliano. Robert, thank you. The chief had mentioned that just this week they have had 3 victims of identity theft in town. The reason why they're putting together this program is because they don't want to a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth, but they know that they will. In other parts of the country, identity theft is even a bigger problem, and it's becoming an even bigger problem here today. In Houston, Texas, they are getting 40 new victims every single week into the Houston Police Department. This is a major problem that unfortunately is going to continue to get worse, and it's not going to get better anytime soon. So the way in which you protect yourself is to understand everything you can about the problem. The more you understand about the problem, how the crime is committed, the better chance you have of protecting yourself. So in today's program, I will be talking about some of the statistics related to the crime, how stolen identities are used, the extent of the problem. I'm actually going to show you how identity thieves obtain IDs. Also, legal forms of ID in circulation, fake IDs and how easy they are to create. Also, public records and how public records continue to exasperate the problem. Our personal information is online for free via public records that our state governments are posting online. Also, privacy issues, numerous privacy issues that we still face. How a thief obtains all the different parts of our identities, and also prevention dos, things that you should be doing every single day, week, month, and year. 42% of identity theft is done to access and create credit card accounts. Credit card fraud is the most prevalent form of identity theft. Credit is king, and when someone gets a credit card under your name, they usually turn that into cash pretty quickly. And once they turn it to cash, well, they never pay the bill. So what they do is, is they will open up new credit cards under your name. That's one type of credit card fraud. They get your Social Security number, they get information about you, they apply for credit under your name, they get a brand new card, they max that card out, you never see the credit card, you never see the bill, and then eventually bill collectors call you for non-payment. Sometimes you might go to apply for a loan, and you're denied by that creditor because you have all these outstanding credit cards that are opened up under your name that you didn't know about because an identity thief got a hold of your information. The other type of credit card fraud is when they use that credit card that you have in your wallet. Many of us at one point in time have had a little bit of fraud on our existing credit cards. You go to a restaurant, you go to a gas station, whatever the case may be, a retailer,, and for whatever reason, your credit card number is compromised. Some major retailer, a big supermarket chain, or a big retail store, their information is breached, there's a hacker gets access to their information, and so you have to get a new credit card because the data was breached. Well, that type of credit card fraud, while it's a problem, it's not the biggest problem. That type of credit card fraud really can be corrected by you simply just paying attention to your credit card statements. How does a thief get a hold of your credit card if you haven't lost it? Well, every time you use it, every time you go to the gas station, every time you go to a restaurant, every time you place an order online, every time you place an order over the phone, you could go to the supermarket, you could hand it to the clerk, they could swipe it underneath the counter on a device that records that information. The supermarket's databases can be hacked. There's hundreds of different ways, but your responsibility is not to protect that card number. It's to pay attention to your statement. That's all you need to do. As long as you do that, you're in good shape. Should you use a debit card or credit card? I'm a big fan of credit card versus debit card. Reason why I don't like to use a debit card is if your debit card is compromised, and it can be, even though you use a PIN, it can be compromised. If your debit card is compromised, that accesses your bank account. Your cash. That's your money. Whereas if your credit card is compromised, whose money is it? The credit card's, not yours. It's their problem, not yours. Whereas if they access your debit card account, your bank account, and they liquidate your account, any checks you have written up against that account are going to bounce. It's headaches for you and so forth. I would recommend credit cards versus debit cards. And I pay for credit cards with I hardly ever pay with cash. I don't worry about credit card fraud. I don't worry about it because I check my credit card statements. I don't worry about new cards being opened up under my name because I have a security system wrapped around my identity. Anytime someone was trying to open up a new account under my name, I get a phone call first. See how that works? Solve problems. That's what I'm here for. And what is internet hacking? It's quite a mystery to a lot of people. Internet hacking really is about computer users that understand how PCs work, generally a little bit better than you and I do, and what they do is they have access to software programs. They call them penetration testing tools, and these pen test tools that they use are software programs that look for for vulnerabilities in our networks. They look for improperly configured firewalls. They look for wireless networks that are not encrypted. They look for out-of-date operating systems and out-of-date virus definitions and so forth. So, there are thousands and thousands of penetration testing programs, software programs available to these hackers. And they scour the internet looking for computers that are not properly protected. Detected. If your PCs are infected with something, chances are they're gonna find you. That's what internet hacking is.
