Participants: Shelley Quinn (Host), Ernest Staats
Series Code: IAA
Program Code: IAA000331
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00:30 Hello and welcome to again to "Issues and Answers."
00:33 We're so glad that you could join us today 00:35 and you're going to be glad too. 00:36 I want to encourage you to get a pencil and a paper, 00:39 no matter where you are. 00:41 And if particularly if you're a parent, 00:43 we are going to be talking today about identity theft. 00:47 And this is something that is happening 00:49 to all age groups, not just adults. 00:52 You're going to be shocked, at least I was. 00:55 And I want you to sit down and write down 00:58 some of this information, 00:59 so that you will know how to protect your identity. 01:02 This is something that identity theft is becoming 01:06 much more prevalent than we realize. 01:08 And it can be very dangerous 01:10 and cause you a lot of problems. 01:12 You know, the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 10:16. 01:16 He said, "Behold I'm sending you out like sheep 01:19 in the midst of the wolves, be wary, 01:23 be wise as serpents and gentle as doves." 01:27 We've got to become wise as those serpents 01:30 who are trying to steal our identity. 01:32 And here today to tell us how we might protect 01:35 that identity is Ernest Staats. 01:38 Ernest, thank you so much for joining us again. 01:40 You're welcome. 01:41 You know, I always enjoy when you're here 01:42 because you're very knowledgeable on this topic of. 01:46 You're, I mean your degree is in actually, 01:49 your masters, isn't it? 01:50 My masters, yes. Is in internet--I mean-- 01:53 Network Security. Network Security. 01:56 And so you are the IT Director 01:58 for the Georgia-Cumberland Academy. 02:01 And that is in... 02:04 Calhoun, Georgia. Calhoun, Georgia. 02:06 I had a brain freeze in. Anyway, we're glad you're back. 02:10 So tell me you and I were talking before the program. 02:15 And you shocked me because I've only thought 02:18 of identity theft as being an issue for adults. 02:22 You said, otherwise. That's right. 02:24 I wish it was just an adult issue 02:26 because I know it would be one less thing I have to do. 02:28 But I have, I have young girl, 4-years-old, Nariah. 02:31 But the statistics are proving out 02:33 the last few years has been really a surprise. 02:36 People have been turning 18 and they'd be finding out 02:38 they have a horrible credit rating. 02:40 And they're trying to figure what's going on 02:41 and they found out that, 02:43 they found that social security numbers 02:45 were not that protective of young people. 02:47 Schools, public schools, you know that different areas 02:50 where it's-- they were people getting-- 02:51 if we can hold of the social security number, 02:53 they then just change the birth date. 02:55 So they're finding that the actual largest growing 02:57 market of identity theft right now today 03:00 is in young children. 03:01 And I don't suppose people think to even, 03:04 I certainly wouldn't think to check 03:06 the credit reports on my child. 03:10 Right. I wouldn't have thought about it either. 03:12 When I was at cyber crime seminar 03:13 which is a gathering of all the top FBI people, 03:15 dealing with this type of issue in Atlanta, 03:17 year ago they talked about the fact 03:19 that this is becoming such a large issue now 03:21 that they are recommending every parent, 03:24 if your child is over 2 years of age 03:26 to start checking their credit report 03:28 history every year, once a year. 03:30 There is just one more thing to worry about, isn't there? 03:33 So what can we do to protect our family's identity? 03:37 There is a lot of steps you can take. 03:38 First of all, you're going to be careful about 03:39 who you give your information to. 03:41 You want to make sure that they're being careful 03:43 with the information and you have every right to say, 03:46 how is this going to be stored? 03:48 You know, if you walk into a place 03:49 where you see credit card number is just stacked up, 03:51 there's a problem. Okay. 03:52 You know, if nobody's there watching the counter. 03:54 But you want to just take some precautionary steps, 03:57 we recommend and actually the FBI also recommends 04:00 that you don't receive any type of mail 04:02 to your mailbox unless it's a locked mailbox. 04:05 Or you have it deliver to a post office box. 04:08 You just have your personal mail coming there, 04:10 but no financial information whatsoever. 04:12 We've gone at our house, we've gone to all online banking 04:15 and we even get our statements electronically. 04:18 You see, there's something think 04:19 oh, mercy now that's really dangerous to do online banking. 04:23 But you are saying it's actually safer. 04:25 I think it's a lot safer in lot of ways 04:26 because a lot of people are doing 04:27 what are called, what's called dumpster diving 04:29 or trash diving where there's actually companies 04:32 that hire people that when your trash gets taken out, 04:34 they go through the trash 04:35 looking for that type of information. 04:37 Now say I use a shredder at home, 04:39 I mean, for everything just about 04:41 that has to do with any kind of personal information, 04:43 any kind of I use a shredder for credit card offers, 04:48 you know, anything like that. 04:50 And that's what you should be doing. 04:51 That's excellent. 04:52 Because shredders are cheap, 04:54 you know, compared to someone who has lost their identity. 04:56 And I had someone you know, take my identity once also. 04:59 And it took me months to re-gather 05:01 all the information that they took 05:03 and they charged up stuff on my 05:05 and it was going straight out of my debit card, 05:06 so it came straight out of my account. 05:08 So with that paper shredder, you know for 20, 30, 05:12 even 50 bucks if you go buy an expensive one 05:14 that will shred CDs that has electronic data. 05:16 You know, that's not a huge expense. 05:19 And the other thing that I do is recently 05:21 we had a laptop computer that was beyond repair. 05:26 And so before I donated it to someone else, 05:30 I took out all the hard drive, I took out anything that could 05:34 have any kind of data, 05:35 even though it had been erased stuff out now, 05:37 I know somebody could be smart enough to retrieve it. 05:39 So I'm very careful that way. 05:41 And that's really important, because like for us, 05:43 the financial computer we retired last year, 05:46 one of the computers at GCA. 05:47 We formatted the hard drive. Right. 05:49 Then we formatted it was a drill 05:52 and we took a drill and went through it several times 05:54 with a drill and literally went through physically destroyed it, 05:58 because it had the financial data 06:00 of people who came to our academy and stuff. 06:01 That's the only way to truly be make sure 06:04 that it is beyond anybody getting information 06:07 of if it's physically destroyed. 06:08 Even if you format it, 06:09 I have software where I can unformat it. 06:12 And it's open to the public, it's online. 06:14 All right. So we got to be careful. 06:16 What are some other ways? 06:17 Besides we want to make sure 06:18 that you protect your information, 06:20 you want to make sure you receiving stuff 06:21 in a secured fashion. 06:23 If you receive stuff on your computer 06:25 and people say oh, you know, 06:26 you do any electronic transactions 06:27 you need to be really worried about that. 06:29 To me, I'm more worried honestly 06:31 than the electronic transactions, 06:32 I'm more worried about handing my debit card 06:34 to someone at a restaurant. 06:36 You actually had an experience, didn't you? 06:37 I had an experience and it bit me. 06:39 And I handed a debit card 06:40 and they charged a bunch of things 06:41 and it came straight out of my account. 06:43 Now I always make sure it's a credit card 06:45 that I can go back and I can dispute the charges. 06:48 Debit card never leaves my hand, it's my philosophy. 06:52 So but a credit card then I can get of someone, 06:55 because you get something to stand on. 06:56 The other issues you want to look at 06:58 as you're doing this and you're trying to keep yourself safe, 07:01 you want to make sure that you have everything secured 07:03 including your computer, most people think about this, 07:05 they will go home and they will put wireless in their house 07:08 because it's convenient, they don't realize 07:10 that their neighbors over there can see everything 07:11 they're doing on their wireless network 07:13 including their banking transactions 07:15 and other thing, so you want to be-- 07:16 Oh, really, I was just thinking of having wireless 07:18 in my home but you're saying that's not a good. 07:20 No, it's not bad to do it all, I've got wireless 07:23 but on my website es-es.net. 07:26 I have narrative PowerPoint that tells 07:28 you how to secure you wireless. 07:30 If you don't secure your wireless, 07:31 then you're asking for trouble. 07:33 But if you secure your wireless, it's not a problem at all. 07:36 Because there's not too many, 07:37 I know that sophisticated hackers might get beyond 07:41 some firewalls and the decryption things 07:44 but for most of your neighbors 07:46 are not going to have that kind of look. 07:49 And that's probably, you know, you need to take 07:51 in consideration where you are at, 07:52 if you're living in downtown, metropolitan area. 07:54 You know, if you're living out in the country, 07:56 I still would put security on it. 07:58 But you know I won't be quite so worried 07:59 as going to the high level, 08:00 I always put what's called WPA security. 08:03 And if you go on to my website, 08:05 you can look at the PowerPoint it will explain all this to you. 08:08 And that's more than we have time for today 08:10 And one thing that I learned not to do many years ago, 08:13 I used to carry my social security card in my wallet 08:17 and I had my credit cards 08:18 and you got the checkbook in there 08:20 and I have my social security card. 08:22 And all of a sudden it dawned on me. 08:24 Well, if I ever lost my wallet my identity is gone. 08:27 It is. 08:29 And but I recommend also for people to do 08:31 and I've done this because we do quite a bit of traveling, 08:33 my wife and myself with our little girl. 08:35 I've taken out everything that's in her purse 08:37 and everything that's in my wallet and I've photocopied it. 08:40 And then I sent it to a friend who I know 08:42 he's got a fire safe and I trust him implicitly. 08:45 He's an accountant. 08:48 He has it saved there, so it's inner fire safe, 08:51 so if something happens, I can call him 08:52 and get on my numbers right away. 08:54 Oh, that's smart. 08:55 So, or you know, we've also sent stuff, 08:57 we've got pictures of our first little girl who passed away. 08:59 I've got copies of those at my house 09:01 and then I've also have a copy at my parent's house 09:03 in case we had a house fire. 09:05 You know, there are some things that you want them 09:06 that are a worth more value to that you 09:08 want to make sure that you have copies or duplicates of. 09:11 And that's one of the things I recommend is 09:12 if you do a lot of traveling to do that, 09:14 if you're going to be leaving the country, 09:15 that's very important. Okay. 09:17 So how about, can't you place a fraud alert 09:22 on your credit cards? 09:24 Yes, you can. 09:25 And matter of fact I just received the notice 09:26 because I used to work for the State of Georgia 09:27 that I need to put a fraud alert alarms, 09:29 because they just lost the hard drive that had all the data, 09:31 all of those personal information on 09:33 for all the employees of the state of Georgia 09:35 for the last 15 years. 09:37 So but when you do that, 09:38 you want to place your fraud alert, 09:39 you can also go to annualreport.com. 09:42 You know, and your creditreport.com, 09:44 it's on my website, you can link from my website. 09:47 If you don't remember the URL and it will take you out 09:48 and there's 3 different companies out there 09:51 that you can go through and check your credit reports. 09:53 I only check one at a time, I don't do all three. 09:55 Explain why? 09:56 Because I check the first one, I wait about 3 months 09:59 then I check the second one. 10:01 Then I wait about 3 months and then I check the third one. 10:03 So that I'm kind of getting them throughout 10:05 the whole year, not just once a year doing it. 10:07 That way I can go through just because if something shows up 10:10 kind of funky on one then I can say, 10:11 okay, there is something going on, I can go ahead if I need to, 10:13 I can run the second one against it, 10:15 because it's been long enough time period. 10:17 So if you do that every 3 or 4 months you know, 10:19 you can kind of go through and check through 10:21 and see exactly what's happening with your credit reports 10:23 and like I said I check my daughter's too 10:25 and she's only 4-years-old. 10:27 And what is the charge for something like that? 10:30 If you're doing the annualreport.com, 10:31 it's nothing, it's free. Annualreport.com. 10:35 Annualcreditreport.com and you can go through 10:37 and pull it off once a year 10:39 from each of those different agencies for free. 10:41 We can get all three for free. 10:43 You get all three as long as you only do one at a time. 10:46 So you spread them every 3 or 4 months, you know. 10:48 I just have got-- there are certain months 10:50 where I do things like taxes, when I do my taxes, 10:52 I do the credit reports at the same time. 10:54 How can you secure your online connections 10:56 when you're talking about the banking 10:59 and all of the stuff, let's talk about this more. 11:02 When yours, first of all you want to make sure 11:03 that your bank has good security in place 11:06 or if you're buying something online. 11:07 I mean, like we were talking offline, 11:09 I even buy my groceries online. 11:12 When I do that I got to make sure that it's a secure site. 11:15 It will usually say in the URL, https and it will have a colon. 11:20 And then it will have you know, and they will have a colon 11:22 and then have the rest of the website, 11:23 you know, www, whatever. 11:25 But the "s" means it's a secure connection. 11:28 Typically you will see if you have an older browser, 11:31 you will see a padlock down at the bottom right hand corner, 11:34 a golden padlock. 11:35 If that padlock is gold and it's locked it's secure. 11:38 If you have a newer browser 11:40 and it's not a secure connection, 11:42 it will pop up with an alert 11:43 and it will tell you Internet Explorer, Mozilla, 11:45 these newer browsers if they're latest versions they will say, 11:48 this is an unsecured connection, 11:49 do you want to go here? 11:51 If it's you bank or something you're buying from, no way. 11:54 You don't want to go there because there's a problem 11:55 that is being compromised. 11:57 You also want to make sure that any place 11:59 you're going to has a physical address. 12:01 I would never buy something 12:02 that's just purely an online site. 12:04 They don't have some type of physical address 12:05 that you can reference back to. 12:07 Because you have no idea who are you dealing with? 12:10 And where they are at, once you've done those steps, 12:12 then you want to make sure your basic computer is safe. 12:15 You want to make sure you've got all your Microsoft updates 12:17 if you're running Windows, if you're running Macintosh 12:19 or what, you know, Linux, one of these others, 12:21 you can also got to update those too. 12:23 You know, I'm rather, when you take Microsoft 12:26 updates I always get my entire virus software updates 12:30 just where it's an automatic thing. 12:32 But I'm reluctant about getting the updates on the Microsoft 12:36 because one time I didn't update it 12:39 and it messed up my computer so badly 12:41 and it took a week practically to get it all straightened out. 12:45 But you're saying that that is a good idea, 12:47 because there are new security enhancements in these updates. 12:51 What I typically do is I just make sure 12:53 it's the security enhancements, 12:54 I don't always go down like 12:56 they got a new player of windows media player 12:58 or something that, you know, it's an optional download, 13:00 I don't always do that, I only do the security enhancements. 13:03 You still can run into a problem but if you go to my website, 13:06 I'll step you through on how to do what's called 13:08 a restore point in Windows. 13:10 And let's talk about your website 13:11 because this is a free resource 13:13 that you just a part of your ministry. 13:16 And that website address, 13:17 if you want to write this down is es-es.net. 13:24 Let me repeat that es-es.net. 13:29 Not trying to sell you anything 13:31 but there is a narrative, there is a narrative PowerPoint 13:34 on there that will walk you through some of these things 13:36 as well as some good links. 13:38 It's very educational and it's free. 13:41 So that's quite a service and we thank you for that. 13:45 One of the things that when people are looking to save, 13:48 sometimes we get concerned because of its terminology, 13:50 well, I don't know that, you know, 13:51 people say I have Microsoft. 13:53 You know, I don't know if I got Windows or you know what I have. 13:56 But if you go through I would also, 13:58 you know, talk to young person at the church 14:00 who you go to church with you or some young person 14:02 that you feel like is a trustworthy young person, 14:04 they can help step you through this, 14:06 they can your antivirus up to date. 14:08 And you need to have antivirus software. 14:11 You need to make sure that your firewall is turned on. 14:14 Windows comes built with a firewall. 14:16 You know, Macintosh comes built with a firewall. 14:19 They need to be turned on. They are not always turned on. 14:22 I'm not even sure, I didn't know that it came with the firewall. 14:24 So I'm sure mine is turned on. 14:26 But most of time in the newer version of Windows, 14:27 they will be a nice little red icon down 14:29 at the bottom right hand corner 14:30 if your firewall is turned off alerting you, 14:33 if you have a newer version of Windows. 14:34 You know saying there's a problem, 14:36 your firewall is off, do you want to turn it on? 14:37 Okay. And then you can say yes. 14:39 What about encrypting files that sounds 14:42 so sophisticated and difficult? 14:45 It sounds it but it's really not. 14:47 There are several different software packages out 14:49 in the market that make encrypting very easy. 14:51 I encrypt all of our personal banking, our tax records. 14:54 They go to a certain section on my hard drive 14:56 that I encrypt and I have to put a password to get into it. 14:59 And on my website there are several 15:00 different software packages 15:01 that I list out and I go for the ones that are free 15:04 because I like the price. 15:05 So explain that because some people may not know 15:07 what we're talking about encrypting a file. 15:10 When you encrypt a file basically it takes all 15:12 the data and it scrambles it into a mathematical formula. 15:15 And what it does it makes for somebody else, 15:17 it's very hard for someone else 15:18 to figure out what that data was. 15:20 So if you're at the airport 15:22 and your laptop is stolen as Cherri Peters 15:24 was recently traveling here 15:26 and she was running late for the airplane. 15:29 And so, and she went through security somehow 15:31 she got delayed for a moment. 15:33 And she picked up everything 15:34 and went dashing off to the gate 15:38 and realized, I got a light load. 15:40 She left her computer back on the belt and it was stolen. 15:45 So if your computer is stolen and your files are encrypted 15:49 there's important files they can't read it. 15:52 And I--we do that for all of our financial 15:55 or personal data on laptops. 15:56 And actually the North American division 15:58 and the general conference is highly recommending 16:00 for all the ministries. 16:01 If you have any personal information about people 16:04 that your laptop should, 16:05 your entire hard drive should be encrypted. 16:07 And that--did we just recently have something 16:10 with veterans that laptops were stolen 16:12 and all these identities were stolen because or at risk, 16:16 because this information had gotten out. 16:20 And that's what happens with me, 16:21 because I used to be a employee of the State of Georgia. 16:23 When I worked for the State of Georgia 16:24 that was non encrypted hard drive. 16:26 They did put it in the letter that what besides 16:28 letting us know this would happen they said 16:29 they are now making a policy to encrypt 16:32 all the removable storage, which I was, 16:35 should have happened before but you know, 16:36 that's something that is becoming 16:38 more and more part of life. 16:39 And it's not as hard basically just makes 16:41 one more password you have to remember. 16:44 You have the state method, 16:45 you say being online is like being in-- 16:48 The worst crime neighborhood in the world 16:51 and you need to realize that. 16:53 Because you have all of the criminals out there, 16:57 you also have some really great people. 16:58 But you seem to realize it's a high crime neighborhood. 17:01 And so we just have to learn how to protect ourselves 17:03 when we are online. That is correct. 17:06 Part of this is being smart when you are online, 17:09 but also just using a little bit of common sense 17:11 when you go out there. 17:12 If it's the site you've never seen, 17:13 if it offers too good to be true. 17:16 It's too good to be true. 17:17 If you get contacted by some brother 17:19 in another foreign country it says, brother in Christ, 17:22 I've got this money that we need to get to the United States. 17:25 I can't tell you how often those come to me. 17:28 They are not a brother and they are, 17:29 you know, not really in Christ. 17:31 All they want to do is get your money. 17:33 One of the new type of things that's really happening 17:35 more to the retiring generation is called phone fishing. 17:39 Where they will call you up on the phone 17:40 and they will say I'm from your bank, 17:42 I need to verify such and such information. 17:45 And they will think okay, it's from my bank. 17:48 Hang up, call your bank back, 17:50 don't call back any number they give you 17:51 because they also have someone else on another line. 17:53 Say yes, I'm from your bank 17:55 and they want your information, they want your money. 17:58 So it's more important to always never 17:59 and any email you get that comes supposedly 18:02 from your bank or from Yahoo or Amazon, 18:05 delete it and then go, go straight to their website 18:08 and then find a number where you can call someone. 18:10 You know, I was getting some emails that said 18:12 it was from such and such bank and trying to verify 18:15 my account information and I thought 18:16 I don't have an account with that bank. 18:19 So I called the bank and they aren't even locally around here 18:23 and I called them and I said you know, 18:25 I'm on your email list and they are saying that and they said, 18:27 oh, this is a scam, you know, fraud alert, fraud alert, 18:30 we want you to talk to such and such department. 18:33 Well, it keeps on happening and now it's not just 18:36 with that one bank that I have four, five emails 18:39 from "supposed to be from different banks." 18:42 People and they look so official 18:44 and they got official logo and they wanting 18:47 to verify my account information. 18:50 Now it just so happens I didn't have one 18:53 but had my bank, the email come under 18:56 the name of my banks saying that, you know, 19:00 if you were just like you do so many emails 19:04 you just dash off response. 19:06 I could have accidentally leaked out 19:10 some information to some crooks. 19:11 And they're counting on that. 19:12 They're counting on do you want to be helpful. 19:15 And as one of the things it's called social engineering. 19:17 Where people they go on normal customs 19:20 where people are sitting here it's socially polite to hold 19:22 the door open for someone. You're right. 19:24 But if it's a locked down facility you better not be 19:26 holding that door even if they have a batch. 19:28 You know, even if they say 19:29 they are from the telephone company, you have no proof, 19:32 you need to call and verify. 19:35 Recently we had AT&T came into our building 19:37 and I--and the secretary comes in 19:39 and said AT&T is in our building. 19:40 I said, we have no scheduled repairs. 19:42 I immediately called off them and I said, what's going on? 19:45 And they start tracking down and said, 19:46 oh, we're switching you over to fiber optics from copper. 19:50 And I said we were not informed of this 19:52 that person I want to know make sure 19:54 this is the right person and all they are like, 19:55 you're the first customer out of t the 50 different places 19:59 they been to that day that would actually ask, questioned it. 20:02 And these were big businesses 20:03 that they'd been to that they were telling me about. 20:06 So it could've been some crook. 20:07 It could have been any crook they walk-in just 20:08 because he had AT&T batch, 20:09 they were letting him go right into 20:11 where all those data is stored. 20:13 Now you know we often hear about personal computers 20:16 being compromised, what's the number one avenue 20:20 to compromise your personal computer? 20:22 The number one way, typically, 20:23 your computer gets compromises usually by something you do. 20:27 My wife loves to do different fonts she's a teacher, 20:31 she likes to have different pictures, 20:32 she's always going out saying, 20:33 oh, if I can make this look pretty 20:35 and she's in a quilting guild, she likes to, 20:36 you know, she makes the brochure for them. 20:39 Well, where she's going out 20:40 and getting these different funds, 20:41 often times you don't about the sites you're getting stuff from. 20:44 You have no guarantee that 20:45 they didn't pack a virus in with the font, 20:48 or they didn't pack a virus 20:49 in with that pretty picture or design. 20:50 So you're saying it's just a free download, 20:52 is that what you're saying? Yeah, right. 20:53 So this free downloads are risky. 20:55 They are risky. 20:57 You have to realize that, you keep your antivirus running, 20:59 make sure your firewall's in place. 21:02 You know, I use special software to lock down the hard drive, 21:05 so if something like that happens on your computer, 21:07 I go back to the previous state without the virus there. 21:10 So and we've had a multiple times. 21:13 Really? Yes. 21:15 Now you know that's two things that I've learned 21:17 from you because that an encrypting. 21:19 I don't encrypt my files, but that's you're saying 21:21 that's easy, it sound difficult 21:23 but it's just a piece of software 21:25 and you just have to have the password, 21:27 and when the password's put in 21:28 and then it brings it back into a readable format. 21:31 Right. That's interesting. 21:32 So where there is there some of the safety, 21:35 let's talk about some of the safety consideration 21:37 for digital media and just too in general. 21:44 When you're dealing with digital media, 21:46 you want to make sure that you, if you're like say 21:50 for example a ministry, you want to make sure 21:52 that you've looked at all the considerations exactly 21:56 how we kept the data safe. 21:58 What are we doing with it, how are we storing it, 22:00 how are we transmitting it, 22:01 are we letting people know if something happens. 22:04 And also making sure that there could be 22:05 no other affiliation with your name, 22:08 it's very important to protect the name. 22:10 Then as an individual, 22:11 you want to take those same type of precautions to you, 22:14 with your identity, you're going to be very careful with, 22:17 who you give your information to, your private information, 22:20 your health data, your, you know, physical address, 22:23 your telephone numbers, your cell phone numbers. 22:25 Yeah,-- I just realized 22:28 I'm having a little procedure done in a couple of days 22:31 and I received a phone call on the way here to the studio today 22:35 that I wasn't expecting and they said this is the hospital 22:38 we want to pre register you and went through 22:41 and I gave them all my personal information 22:44 including my social security card 22:45 and then they asked for my husband 22:47 and his social security card and it was until I hung up 22:50 because I was just in the mad dash over here 22:52 from to the studio and I realized, 22:56 I hope this was really the hospital 22:58 because they just called me on my cell phone 23:00 and I started answering all this personal information. 23:05 Right and that's a very common thing that's happening. 23:08 And there's a gentleman who's actually being going 23:09 between America and Canada, we finally -- 23:12 and FBI finally caught him in Canada 23:14 but he was doing this exact thing, 23:16 doing phone fishing, he would pull 23:17 records out of hospitals this type of stuff 23:20 and they would pay different people on their salary 23:22 to give them this type of information 23:23 and then they would start calling people 23:24 and asking that type of information. 23:26 I know several people including people who work for the FBI, 23:29 when they go into a hospital, 23:30 they refuse to give their social security number. 23:33 Really? Refuse. 23:35 And they have to go ahead and, I mean... 23:37 They start to treat him, I'll give you my driver's license, 23:40 I'll give you that but I'll not give you 23:41 my social security number. 23:42 These are people who work 23:43 for the government in cyber security. 23:46 So they've gone to that approach 23:48 and they said makes the hospital grumpy 23:49 but they eventually get over. 23:53 Now you tell me. 23:55 If only we'd had this conversation 23:57 just a few hour earlier. 23:59 But now it's interesting that you're talking about ministries 24:01 because I know that we do a lot here at 3ABN before firewalls 24:05 and protecting all this information, 24:07 make sure they're secured. 24:09 But are there templates and recommendations 24:12 from ministries about how they should handle 24:15 and protect the personal information that they receive? 24:18 They're and I actually have them on my website. 24:21 What I've done is they are legal office of the general conference 24:25 has developed a bunch of templates for the ministries. 24:27 As far as a privacy policy, as far as a release 24:31 form for pictures or media release, 24:34 they've made all these policies 24:35 and I've just put them on my website 24:37 because I've been working with them 24:38 as we've been making these different 24:40 media release forms and stuff like that. 24:41 So they're listed on my website, 24:42 you can download them for free, 24:44 you can go and change them, 24:45 modify them for your particular ministry. 24:48 Now we're talking today about protecting your identity 24:52 from identity theft and particularly, 24:54 your young children that because that's becoming prevalent. 24:57 What can we do if your identity 25:01 in the security has been breached 25:03 and your identity has been stolen, 25:04 what does somebody do? 25:06 First thing you do is you want to put a fraud alert 25:08 on your credit history. 25:10 Then you want to start calling all of the different people 25:12 that you have lines of credit with 25:13 and let them know what's going on. 25:15 You know, maker sure you're using numbers 25:16 that you know are valid and are good. 25:18 After when you've done that then you need 25:20 to take an assessment of where are you, 25:22 what's being impact often times it will, 25:24 you need to take a day off work to just sort of through 25:26 all the different complications we have 25:28 because you know some person will have a mortgage, 25:30 they will have you know, maybe a car loan or, you know, 25:33 college loan depending upon if they just got out of college. 25:35 You know, there's always different things 25:36 that have to be taken in consideration, 25:38 so you go through each one of those one by one 25:40 and be very careful and then really pay 25:42 close attention to your credit history. 25:45 After you've done that then the best thing you can do is try 25:47 and see how is it compromised, 25:49 try to determine exactly what, where it came from. 25:52 Once you know where it came 25:53 from then you can hopefully use your personal computer 25:55 if you're pretty sure it was there then deal with it there, 25:58 but I always try to track it back down 25:59 to its root source that way it won't happen again. 26:02 Okay, you know we had a gentleman here 26:04 at the ministry who had his laptop stolen. 26:08 He was on the road crew and traveling 26:10 and he had his laptop stolen from the hotel room 26:13 and literally it took him over a year 26:16 to get everything restored and back in place 26:19 when his identity was stolen. 26:21 And I'm sitting here thinking 26:23 that may be one good piece of advise 26:27 is don't get in a rush about things 26:28 because today I realize that I had, 26:33 I did two stupid things in giving out all this information 26:36 when I wasn't sure it was the hospital, 26:38 but I also got online paid a credit card bill without this, 26:42 usually I always look to make sure all the charges are mine 26:46 but this time I just paid it because I was in a hurry 26:49 and that's one way we need to check all of our charges too 26:52 to make sure someone's not out there using our charge. 26:55 Very much so that's actually 26:56 how I found that my identity had been stolen 26:58 because mine the time when mine happened was, 27:00 I gave someone a debit card. 27:02 Yeah, so that's something. 27:04 Thank you so much and let me give your information 27:06 at one more time if you want to go to this website, 27:08 it's es-es.net and there is free information 27:14 on how to protect yourself in this. 27:16 Ernest you had just been a wealth of information 27:19 and we've learned so much, 27:20 I'm so glad that you made this your ministry. 27:22 Thank you. And thank you for coming. 27:25 For those of you who are at home, 27:26 remember and share this with all the parents that you know. 27:30 It's not just as adults we're working 27:32 and having banking information that get our identity stolen, 27:35 but the identity thefts are going after children's identity 27:39 and kids by the time they are 18 are finding 27:42 they've got horrible credit reports 27:43 because someone has been using their identity. 27:46 Let's protect our identity and be thankful 27:49 that we have a new identity in Christ Jesus. 27:53 Thank you for joining us. |
Revised 2014-12-17