Robert Siciliano breaks down eight types of identity theft: new account fraud, account takeover, tax theft, child identity theft, medical identity theft, criminal identity theft, business identity theft, and identity cloning. He covers practical protections like credit freezes, strong passwords, and recognizing social engineering scams.
Chapters
There's no such thing as 100% security. This means that security is a journey and not a destination. But as long as you do a number of secure things by putting various systems in place, creating new habits, dropping bad ones, then you become a tougher target. So there are really 8 kinds of identity theft that you need to be aware of that you can pretty much protect yourself from depending on the nature of the theft. First and foremost, there is what's called new account fraud, using another person's personal identifying information, their Social Security number, to obtain products and services using that person's good credit standing. New account fraud is pure identity theft, and we'll show you all about how to protect from that momentarily. And then account takeover, which is what most people think of when they think of identity theft, is using another person's account numbers, such as a credit card number, to obtain products and services using that person's existing accounts or extracting funds from a person's bank account. And then tax-related identity theft. Tax-related scams hit $240 million in 2017 with 109,000 victims. About 10,000 business returns have been identified by the IRS as potential identity theft. And then child identity theft. Studies show that this is affecting about 500,000 kids a year. You know, 17 and under, they have a Social Security number today. And once they have that Social, which is generally granted to them, you know, a few months after birth, 'cause their mom usually fills out an application while she's at the hospital. And in order for the parents to claim their children on their taxes, the kid needs a Social. And anybody can take that Social and apply for credit under the baby's name by forging the age of that child and generally providing a different physical address for that credit card. And then medical identity theft, the deadliest form of identity theft, 2.3 million victims. The motivation of the thief is medical procedures or any form of attention regarding health. Healthcare. And then criminal identity theft, which is messy. We talked about Paul earlier. Someone commits a crime and uses the assumed name of another person, and the thief in the act of the crime or upon arrest poses as the identity theft victim. Business or commercial identity theft, using a business's name to obtain credit or even billing those businesses' clients for products and services. In order to get a handle on business or commercial identity theft, I recommend for small businesses engaging in a forensics accountant, an accountant that can come in and look at the books to see if maybe your bookkeeper is doubling up or padding your books. And then identity cloning encompasses all forms of identity theft. The thief is actually living and functioning as the victim on purpose. Don't worry about any of this. Really, I mean that. But you gotta do something about it. Protecting your identity, obviously at this point, isn't nearly as complicated as you might have thought. It's just a matter of engaging in things like a credit freeze, Considering identity theft protection, proper password management, recognizing various scams, knowing about social engineering scams, being aware of all the different things you have to do in regards to account takeover and preventing that, going back to the Information Security Prediction Prevention program, making sure that you're doing all the necessary things to make sure that your devices and your data is properly protected. Now, this course and these courses, along with our coaching calls, are an opportunity for you to ask questions, to get answers, to dig deeper, to learn more. We're here for you. So as you've been taking this course, hopefully you've been taking notes. And on the coaching calls, we'll make sure that all of your questions, all of your comments, all of your concerns are answered. Email us anytime. We're happy to help. We're here for you. Stay safe, be smart. Thank you so much for your time.
