Hi, my name is Bob Brooks, I want to talk to you about the fastest growing crime in America today. And it's not only the fastest growing crime, it's a crime where the bad guys are getting smarter, more effective at the crime. And the good guys are just struggling to keep up. And it's identity theft. And it's happening at a alarming, alarming pace. And it's happening so much that consumers are just not even paying attention to it anymore.

And which is even a bigger problem, which we'll talk about. But consumers are starting to ignore. It's like, Oh, it's another security breach, and they're acting as if this will never happen to them and why I say that it's because I've talked to so many people who are not being proactive, which is key, being proactive in protecting themselves against identity theft, because here's the reality of it. There's nothing out there that's going to completely prevent identity theft. It is what it is. It is getting worse.

And your the the possibilities of you becoming a statistic are great. That's fine. I'd say it's not a matter of when it's a matter, it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when it's going to happen to you. So you've got to be proactive and reduce the risk of that happening to you. Let's look at some numbers just absolutely startling numbers in 2013, almost 92 million personal records were compromised. In 2014, almost 8585 million records were compromised.

Those are alarming, alarming numbers. And if you look at the numbers, that what that means is that that personal record would be your information from the smallest amount of information which would be a debit card or a credit card on file somewhere all the way to a health insurance company or a doctor's office which are getting targeted in a big way because there's so much information on file about you and about your health that the bad guys really want to get that information. Now, check this out. February of two and I'm shooting this this video in 2015 February 2015 Team anthem health would had a major security breach. And incidentally, this did not get a ton of media attention. 80 million personal records could be affected.

Let me go back 85 total 85 million total records for 2014. This year, one security breach almost 80 million. Look at this statistic since 2005 5029 reported data breach incidents, more than 675 million personal records. So now you see the real statistics. And I don't think that this is communicated enough that hey, this is a big problem. Unfortunately, our national security has not been I'm sure it's been threatened.

But nothing is successful up to this date and hopefully won't be but just trying to stay away from stay ahead of the bad guys is a real, real problem. Now you may look at those numbers and go Well, the good news, Bob is that 2013 only 91 million, and we went down to 85 million in 2014. But that's not the whole story. Look at the number of security breaches in 2013, compared to 2014 614, up to 783. Now that for this year, they're estimating that's going to be close to that number because 783 security breaches were a lot. I went through a it was interesting, I went through a log, where they were, they were right, they were writing down all the different security breaches that happen.

And looking at these and I'm thinking, wow, this happened this year. I got down to the bottom and realized was just October. I mean, it was an amazing amount of security breaches. Between just in the month of October now 675 million since 2005. Let's put that into perspective. There's 322 million pool we have a population of 322 million as of July 1 2014.

Do you think that the odds are You're going to become a statistic at some point, these stat these statistics would indicate that could be the point the problem. In fact, if you look at the percentage of the United States population that was affected last year, was 26%. And then this year 28%, were affected. So these are some pretty sobering numbers and should be waking people up to, hey, we need to be taking steps and be once again, proactive. Now, fortunately, that's what this teaching video is about, that we're going to we're going to get to everything you need to know so that you could start your own identity theft protection plan. So first, we have to start off with fraud versus ID theft, because this is a very, very important distinction.

Now, if you as you can imagine, take a problem that like this, like identity theft that we have, he saw the statistics. There's an equal bigger business of solutions to fix that problem. And you see the commercials all the time. They're sensational. No matter what happens, what kind of security breach that happens. It's always the worst case scenario, not true.

Don't buy into the sensationalized marketing as we talk about on these videos. That is a problem. It makes bits of fear marketing. So there's fraud. This is what I like to call identity theft, identity theft nuisance. This is where someone gets your credit card.

This is where someone gets your debit card and they use it in an unauthorized charge. Fortunately, and we'll talk about this, the laws are there to protect you, and will work in your behalf. He can get that cleared up, ID theft, where they get your, your social security number, that is a real problem. Now there's an interesting trend that I've started to notice that up until this year, where we're seeing more of the security breaches that happened with the more than nuisance, the identity theft nuisance. This year, we're seeing the social security numbers, and we're seeing massive amounts of social security numbers stolen. In fact, we're seeing more sophisticated meaning of getting information.

Take the IRS security breach this year. This is an unbelievable story. Not only were hackers successful in breaking into the IRS, I mean, that by itself is alarming. They used information from a other security breach to get into the IRS. That is sophistication right there. And they they built billions of dollars in tax refunds.

I think I think the number was somewhere around 34 billion or something like that. But it was it was significant amount of money out of the IRS in tax refunds that should have never happened. And then there was another government break in where the hackers stole 100,000 sets of fingerprints. Now, that's, that's disturbing. I think you would agree that it makes you think, what are they going to do fingerprints, so it's getting worse and worse. health insurers are getting hit.

And there's a lot of concern about health. Identity theft. So but you got to know not all identity theft is the worst of the worst. And it is escalating, though. So let's talk about identity theft solutions because you got to know it, you have to use some form of these solutions as part of your plan. And we'll start with the comprehensive identity theft system.

Now, these are the big commercials, the big marketing campaigns, the companies that advertise and claim that if you are a Joe Smith, and you add another Joe Smith, we're going to keep you two separate. Just think about how ridiculous this is. We're going to keep both of these separate and protect you because we understand you both just met. And the same company that one of the largest companies. They used to have a sophisticated as they would say system of protecting you from identity theft. The owner of the company would parade around in New York with a big 18 Wheeler truck with his social security number on the outside.

Instead, I dare you to steal my ID because I'm protected by our sophisticated system. Do you want to go through a sophisticated system was it and we'll talk about what a fraud alert is in a minute, but it was to put fraud alerts on credit file. So if you called in, and you told them, hey, I want to sign up for your system great, and they go put a fraud alert, which is something you can do for yourself, you're paying them to do something that you could do for yourself. In fact, what we come to what we find out is that fraud alerts don't always work. They're all effective 75% of the time. So you can guess what happened to the owner of this company, he got his identity stolen multiple times.

But he gets even better. And I'm just painting a picture of an industry that you can kind of see here. This, the credit reporting agencies got fed up with this company, signing all these fraud alerts, because the intent of the law was not, hey, put a fraud alert on your account just because you want to it was put a fraud alert on your account. If you think or suspect you're a victim of identity theft. That was the intent of the law. And so they finally filed a suit against him.

The Federal Trade Commission came after him slapped deceptive marketing charges on him. I kid you not it was and they had it, they had to cease and desist their entire operation. It wasn't until maybe three or four weeks, I might be off on that. Three or four weeks later, they rolled out a brand new identity theft formula that's going to protect you from everything. So take it for what it says I'm gonna slide them they're great marketing company. By the way, I want to slide the marketing aside and look at the the really the meat of what you need.

You need credit report monitoring. I think everybody should have credit report monitoring. Now this is there's there's two different kinds. I want to I want to differentiate this because you need to understand this, but credit file monitoring your current credit report monitoring is where a company monitors your three credit reports for you. If someone tries to get into your credit report by inquiring in signing up for an application for let's say, a big screen television, then you're going to get alerted right away that something has changed. And what has changed is there's a new inquiry.

Now you can take that and stop it dead in its tracks. Be proactive. Okay. So I was talking to somebody at one point. And they said that they had credit monitoring, and they saw an alert, and they saw it as a direct tv in another state and he just disregarded three, three months later he gets a bill from a debt collector wanting to know why he hasn't paid his DirecTV bill, because someone stole his information. Someone ordered DirecTV course they didn't pay the bill got cut off in a couple of months.

And now DirecTV is coming after this guy and saying, Hey, where's our money? And it took him unbelievable amount of time just to unwind, unwind that I mean, this just the sheer fact he doesn't live there should be enough. But it wasn't. He had to go through the process of unwinding it. Now. That's credit file monitoring where they, they, they they monitor off three of your credit reports, free credit file monitoring, that's a new one that's a new business model and what these companies do, they actually give it away.

They give it away. They have marketing partners that pay the cost. Now, these marketing partners what they want, they want your information, which, when you sign up for the free credit, credit report monitoring, you give them full permission to give information to their marketing partners, market marketing partners. So I don't know about you, I don't want to be on a bunch of marketing lists. I don't want to be bombarded by emails and solicitations. So to me, that's enough to not want to do it.

But a bigger reason is that most of these companies just just protect one of the three credit reporting agencies. Not enough you got to have all three because here's, I'll give you a perfect example. Typically, a creditor is going to inquire on one of the credit reporting agencies, so the accounts opened up, it gets funded, the debt the crime has happened, and then the other to get the information reported to them. So monitoring one's just not enough at all. So I would personally if it were me, I would stay away from free credit. Monitoring even though it does have the operative word free.

Now, fraud alert, this is the second, I mentioned this a second ago. If you think or suspect that you are an adult, that you are a victim, excuse me of identity theft, then you can put a fraud alert on your credit file. Now, that's us, you call up the credit reporting agencies, you put the fraud alert on. And what happens is that if somebody tries to open up an account in your name, they see the fraud alert. They're told to call this number, which is your number. And you have to verify that it's actually you opening up the account, you have to continue to renew these.

But if you're in a situation where you just find out, hey, I might be a victim of identity theft, I would put a fraud alert on quickly. Now, my caveat or disclaimer to that is that it only works once again 75% of the time, but it's better than having nothing on it while you're trying to get everything in place and figure out what's going on. The ultimate protection is a security freeze. Now, this is where You can put a lock on your credit reports, nope, you freeze them. In essence, nobody can get into them. And the only way information comes off of your credit reports is if you unfreeze, this is the best form of protection.

The problem is, is that if you're still working, you're still have kids and you're still making purchases, that you probably will still have the need to open up credit and have your file checked. So it's kind of a nuisance. But if you're in a situation a point in your life where you know you're retired, for instance, you know, you're not going to have a need for credit. Security freeze makes total sense. Now, let's talk about identity identity theft, gameplan and strategy. Remember, what I said is that there's no way to prevent identity theft.

In fact, regulators got this company that I mentioned earlier, regulators got on this company, about deceptive marketing again, and this company changed their advertising to say, not all systems can stop every Identity theft, which is the first time these ads got real by the way. So let's start with be proactive. I obviously I've been talking about this throughout the entire teaching course you've got to be proactive. You've got to take everything serious. You've seen the statistics, don't forget those those statistics, monitor your credit files. Today, if I were you, I know it costs a little bit of money each month.

But it's a it's to me it's an investment in your protection, and not having credit file monitoring. And here's the problem with this. Is that an identity theft? And I've heard all types of stories that I'll tell you why in just a second. But identity theft can be going on in your life, and you don't even know it. Now, granted, it's a little bit tougher to get away with it today than it was say years ago, but a story that I did hear years ago was about a gentleman.

He went to his brother's wedding, and they all went to pick up the tuxes. He gives the lady the American Express card. She swipes it gets denied he gets that that doesn't make any sense. Why would they do that? American Express card I'm always current, he calls American Express, he finds out that his adult business has not paid their bill. So someone has stolen his ID.

Right he running an adult business on his ID, and then has bought all kinds of things and even took a mortgage out in his name. His life was pretty much run in took years to unwind all the debt and liabilities that this individual took out in his name, so it could be going on and not even know it. That's why it's so important to check your credit files and to monitor your credit files. Security freeze, we talked about that. If you can do it. This is the highest form in my opinion, of identity theft.

And then check your credit cards for unauthorized activity. This should start to be something you do on a monthly basis and checking in making sure that there's no unauthorized charges now Get it. We use American Express for everything. So everything we don't we rarely use. We don't use debit cards and we rarely use cash. So we try to use American Express for everything.

And so when we get the bill, there's a ton of stuff on that bill. And it's, it's, it's a hassle, admittedly. So to go through and check and make sure, but the problem is is that they oftentimes on these unauthorized charges don't start out big charges. They start out small charges to see if you're paying attention. And once they see you're not paying attention, then the big charges happened. I went to on a trip a business trip, checked into a hotel, gave the the individual my card, got it back three months later, there was a whole thing of cell phones charged on my business card.

And that's the I was it was interesting, cuz I was talking to a gentleman after we did a radio interview, and he's called himself the ethical hacker. He's a security expert and what he does he companies hire him to see if he can break into their security systems in their databases, and he told me said, flat out frankly goes it's not that hard. was kind of disturbing. But he said, you know, it's interesting that in the day of identity theft that we live in that we will give a waiter our card and let that card go out of our sight. And I got to thinking about that that's so true. Not to say that waiters are skimming cards and everything.

But we have heard of incidences where this has happened. So you've got to be real careful about about what the credit card and what goes on that statement and making sure that it is yours. Now, this is probably the most unpopular advice that I give on the radio show is dumped the debit card, everybody loves debit cards, right? It's easy, it's convenient. It's also a very easy way for a thief or a bad guy to get into your bank account. Let me say it again.

It's the easiest way for a bad guy to get into your bank account. I'm gonna leave it at this. Would you rather have a credit card where a bad guy can access your credit limit, which you can get corrected easily? Or would you like like to give them the keys to your bank account, I don't know about you, but I would much rather have the credit card and have the protection. And incidentally on a debit card, there's only a limited amount of time that you had to report it to where it could actually go and be a permanent withdrawal from your account. So this is why to me debit cards you got to be very careful with and here's the other thing, no positive act credit activity goes with a debit card, even though it says visa on it, or MasterCard, that's just a network, it doesn't mean that you're getting any points on your credit score from that debit card.

So dump the debit card, if you can. Guilty victim approach. I coined this phrase A long time ago because here I got to realize and that was thinking about identity theft, that there's no there's no, there's there's no question that you are a victim of a crime. But at the same time, you're very guilty. In the eyes of the people, you're trying to convince that you're a victim that think about this for a second. If I own a store, and you call me and say hey, listen, somebody charged a flat screen television and build it to me.

And it was not my It was not my I didn't make that purchase. If I'm owning that if I own that store, the first thing I'm thinking, did this guy come in and buy this flat screen television now he's telling me that he didn't? Or was there a really an identity theft that happened. That's why according to the law, we're going to have to do a whole teaching video on this and what steps to take if it happens, but you have to go through so many legal steps to prove you have to file an affidavit, you have to file a police report, you have to go through so many steps. So if you're being dishonest, you're putting yourself at real risk and real liability. But remember, though, you are a guilty victim.

So which means you got to make sure that you have proved that everybody agrees you are not a guilty victim, but that you are a victim of identity theft, so it can't come back to haunt you. Stop carrying around personal information, really because I can't tell you the number of times through Many years of a financial planning practice that I've sat down with with people will be filling out some sort of paperwork. And I'll say, Can you tell me your social security number and your kids security number, and they pull out the list, right straight out of the wallet, or the purse, they pull out the list. And there it is all written down, and I'll look at them and go, please don't do that. You don't want to carry around that information. Do you realize how easy it is for purses and wallets and things that get stolen?

And there's that valuable information or carrying around your social security card? I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone pull one out of the out of a wallet. Don't carry it around with you, please because that's just in Remember, we're trying to decrease the risk, not increase the risk. Observe your surroundings. I'm gonna go ahead and go the next one. Be on guard be aware be suspect.

One time I was preparing for a talk actually on identity theft. And I thought to myself, I was looking at my notes not be paranoid that I didn't sound too good. So we won't, I won't say be paranoid, but be on guard. Be aware, be suspect, and be aware of your surroundings. Because this is what the bad guys want. They want you to be unaware, they want you to be preoccupied.

They want you to be to where you're not on guard because if you're on guard, then they can't get away with what they want to get away with. You know, for instance, I'll give you a good example. If you have strangers coming in and out of your house, you know that you're going to have work done. Make sure that you put up personal information, make sure you put things up away to where nobody can get to it. Oftentimes, we just kind of still leave stuff laying around. Once again, be suspect, be aware, be on guard.

And most importantly, and I call this the golden rule of identity theft, protection. Never give information out when you are approached. We said again, never give information When you're approached, and we can be approached a number of ways, by email by visits at the door, by phone calls. One of the stories that that I've heard oftentimes is where the IRS and this is a scam that's that's going on right now they'll call in, they'll say, delete a message, kind of a threatening message and say, Listen, you still owe us money. We're tired of trying to collect. Now, we're coming after you.

And we're going to file a lawsuit against you, you better call one 800, whatever. So you call that number, and they're wanting to get personal information to verify you're scared out of your mind. And there's there's this one story where a lady called into my radio show and she was telling me that somebody from the county called her and said, you know, Mrs. Smith, we we had you down here for jury duty. And you didn't show up now. You know, there's there's potential fines for not showing up. Now.

Think about Stop, stop and think about this for a second. What's going on here in this in this conversation. Mrs. Smith was just minding our own business. The phone She picks it up as strangers on the other end, telling her that she missed something. And she's trying to jog her memory trying to trying to figure out how did I miss that, and that she may get fined. Now she there's an element of fear in there.

There was the an element of I've been real responsive. I've been irresponsible to now there's an element of fear. Her mind is going in so many directions, then the bad guy says, Mrs. Smith, you know what, it might be an error on our part. Now, what's Mrs. Smith do? She's ha relieved and hopeful. Now she's focusing on hope.

She still has fear in the back of the mind now, but she's still focusing on hope. And the bad guy says, just verify your information in the kind voice now that changed tone. She's maybe a little bit more trusting. She's just hoping to get this episode over with she gets the information out and boom, she's an identity potential identity theft victim just like that. It happens all of the time. So she got approached.

Don't get that information out. Emails we get, we get bombarded by emails telling, telling us from the bank to verify your information, eBay emails coming out to look official, the verifier information go through on this, click through here, you're being approached, don't give information, phone calls, emails, someone who arrives at your door. I've heard stories where people will dress up like they're from the utility company and come by door to door knocking door asking to verify information and taking social security numbers down. Don't do it. And that's just a if you think about it, it makes common sense. If a If a credit card company calls you and says, Hey, you know, this is a problem.

We need to verify information. Hang up, call them back and say, Did you just call Is there a problem? Because that way you've approached them, and it'll keep you out of trouble so many so much of the time. Here's the reality of it. You need to develop a not if, but when in totality. I'd like you know it'd be nice to think that the risk levels are not so There's a high probability of identity theft, it would be nice to know that, but that we've seen the statistics, that's not the case.

And the problem with it, here's the thing to keep in mind. With the advent of new technology, rolling out new versions of iPhones, new versions of computers, what's not happening is that a lot of these, these production houses are not taking the time to really vet that product out. And so when they roll a product out, there's weaknesses in these, the bad guys are smart enough to be able to figure out where the weaknesses in the technology, when a case in point is the hacking of automobiles, automatic auto manufacturers are continuing to roll out new technology that's easy to hack. And I think that as we go forward, especially with the advent of electric car, this is going to be a problem. Can you imagine someone hacking into your car and controlling what happens? It's unbelievable.

But we've already seen cases where someone do an F ethical hacking has done that to show car manufacturers that hey, this is this is happening. And do you think they're going to slow down to fix this problem? No, they're going to pop out cars right left in this is the problem is that new technology continues to race to the market unprepared for the vulnerabilities that it gives consumers. So think about this for a second. The mentality of not when, not when not if, but when this could happen to you and put your own identity protection strategy together and make sure that you're protecting your most personal and important information.