Speaker 1: And the other thing that has been a hot topic
just recently is this situation involving Amazon Prime members. There's
about two hundred and twenty million Prime members, and you know,
with the population and pool that big, it is really
only a matter of time before the bad actors figured
out a way to target them.
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Speaker 3: Ever, And welcome. You are listening to the Financial Survival Network.
I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. Well, it's the end of July.
Here we got stuff happening in credit and I thought
you needed to know about our good friend Paul Auster
from a Better Credit is with us now.
Speaker 4: Paul, great to have you back on the show.
Speaker 3: What's going on in the credit arena?
Speaker 4: So there's a couple of different things.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to note that the current administration
has reversed an earlier ruling that removed medical debt from
people's credit reports. So that situation is going to be
very troublesome for millions of consumers that had those collection
accounts removed from their credit report, only to now be
put back on. So this has been a political football
kind of like student loans has been back and forth
with the debt forgiveness, but nobody was asking for these
medical debts to be forgiven. They came to a really
good decision and decided that it wasn't right for consumers
to continue to suffer, for lack of a better word,
even more from having these medical debts on their on
their credit reports, which then would wind up costing them
more money for every other financial transaction.
Speaker 4: So this is not a situation where.
Speaker 1: People, you know, bought an r V or or a
jet ski or a boat and then couldn't afford it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: These were people that got sick, you know, and and
health is still the number one reason why why people
claim bankruptcy in the first place, being able to afford
the healthcare that they needed. So this is you know,
not elective surgeries and and things like that. This was
situations where people got sick, they incurred some crazy, crazy bills,
and they got sent to collections. So I'm not I'm
not a fan. I'm not happy that the current administration
decided to reverse gears and and put these things back
on the consumer reports.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just seems like you're just kind of adding
insult to injury, you.
Speaker 4: Know, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that has been a hot topic
just recently is this situation involving Amazon Prime members. There's
about two hundred and twenty million Prime members, and you know,
with the population and pool that big, it is really
only a matter of time before the bad actors figured
out a way to target them. So Prime Members have
been victims and targets of you know, the three issues fishing,
which is phone calls, phishing with a p H, which
is email, and smishing which is SMS, text messaging. So
the bad actors are targeting these Prime members. You know,
they're getting messages, emails, phone calls about clign membership renewals,
about their accounts being suspended, you know, with things like that.
And when they click on a link or you know,
open an email and click on a link to supposedly
they're being taken to their account to update payment information again,
update their account information, they could be targeting them with
a product that wasn't sent to them. It's called brushing,
or they send a product that the client didn't order
and then follow up with them directly to try and
resolve that issue. The problem is if you click on
any of those links, you're going to be redirected to
a website that you know has malware and viruses and
things like that that are going to then either log
into your accounts that are open your electronic devices, or
they're going to ask you to provide personal information to
update the accounts. So the message again upun intended. The
message here is don't do it right if in all
of these messages, the one commonality all of these messages
have is this sense of urgency. Right, they're threatening messages, Kerry,
you need to act immediately or your prime membership is
going to get suspended. Kerry, there's a problem with your payment.
We see here it looks like there's fraud happening on
your account. So they're trying to get the people to
act in haste, which then leads to, you know, the
actual identity theft. So if you get any of those messages,
the easiest thing to do is just go to Amazon,
go to your account, log in and click on the
messages and if there's a message from Amazon, that's where
it would be. So again, the problem is you get
people in the middle of life, right, life is happening
all over and they do something that they shouldn't do,
and that's that's click one of the links, provide information
over the phone, or you know, typing information into one
of these websites.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, and there it seems like legit. You know,
it looks legit. That's why you always have to look
at who the center of this item is, right yeah.
Speaker 1: So verifying the verifying the sender's email address is definitely
one of the steps here. And like you said, these
these emails, whether it's from a bank or Amazon, they
look real, they look authentic. So one of the other
things is to make sure that whether you're a prime
member or if you do any thing online, you need
to engage two step authentication. That's one of the easiest
ways to avoid being a victim having someone else logging
in to one of your accounts, even if they get
you're using name and password in order to log in.
The second step is going to be to send an
email or a text message so if they don't have
your phone or they haven't figured out how to redirect
a text message that's supposed to be coming to you,
they won't be able to complete that last step. So look,
we've been saying this for years. You have to change
all of your passwords to pass phrases. You have to
change your passwords by pass phrases on a regular basis.
You can't use the same pass phrase with the same
email for all of your accounts because you are just
begging to become a victim. They have softwares. Now. One
of the things that we know from this particular scam
is when they redirect you to one of these websites,
the software can actually figure out what your password is
and the email associated with it if you use the
same password. Yeah, so if you use the same password
or passphrase an email for all of your other accounts,
that's how this malware and virus works because now they'll
have access to.
Speaker 4: Your computer and it would be very very easy for.
Speaker 1: Them to log into all of the other accounts that
are connected to those devices. So look, it's not easy, right.
You have to use a password manager where you're going
to have to write these passwords down somewhere in a
secure location. But using a password manager is one of
the best ways to help you try and figure this out.
Other than that, you know, the average person now has
easily twenty different passwords and user names. It's probably fifty
one hundred some people in Wish.
Speaker 3: I only have twenty.
Speaker 1: I have like thirteen hundred exactly exactly, So just impossible
to try and manage those user names and passwords without
using a password manager.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy, it's crazy. You have to use one
always use two factor authentication, and what else. There's one
other thing that you need to be doing here, make
sure your phone doesn't get spoofed.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing is, you know, and I think
we spoke about this the last time, and I'm not
always the most popular person in the room because I
ten to fold the consumer right, the victim quote unquote
somewhat responsible for being in that situation. We've all sacrificed
a tremendous amount of our privacy, our data security for
convenience and the easiest way, the best examp there is
when you open up a new account or you download
a new app, whether again, whether it's for your banking
or your Amazon account, when you create your your log
in user name and password, a little blip is going
to pop up and it's going to say, hey, Kerry,
would you like us to remember your password so you.
Speaker 4: Don't have to Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you do that and someone gains access to your again,
to one of your electronic devices, they can log into
your accounts remotely in seconds and literally wipe out your accounts.
Speaker 3: This is true, very true. So, and when you use
a pass word manager, it'll generate a unique password for
every account, so there's no more using your standard password, right.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know, and those those computer generated pass words
pass phrases are very very difficult for these coders and
programs to break, to crack the code, right they have
again softwares that decipher passwords in milliseconds. If you use
a passphrase, it could take days. So what happens is
if the software hits on a computer generated pass phrase
or password, or you've created a very very strong pass phrase,
the software is going to jump to the next person
who still Carrie. You know, I just heard this the
other day and I thought, again, we were getting better
at this, but we're not.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The most common widely used passwords are still hello, one, two, three, goodbye, four,
five six, So any of those combinations of the password
is one of the most commonly used passwords. So if
you're using any thing like that at all, again, you
need to you need to change your behavior because you're
going to become a victim. It's only a matter of when,
not if. You know, the fastest growing crime past couple
of years has been and is going to continue to
be identity theft. And one of the reasons for that
is that we're we're not very good at protecting ourselves.
Speaker 4: You know, I have been.
Speaker 3: Listening to these Reddit stories where people in your family
steal your identity and take out credit cards and loans.
It was shocking, but I guess nothing sacred anymore.
Speaker 1: Now just unfortunately, just like everything else, so often the
victim of identity theft was you know, it was it
was a family member or close friend, somebody that they knew,
a business coworker, So that that intimate setting an environment
makes it very very easy, unfortunately, for that to happen.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a certain amount of trust.
Speaker 1: People get up maybe either computer open rather going in
the bathroom or something like that, and it's very very
easy for a coworker to gain access to your information.
So we need to be careful, you know, obviously showing
a little bit of trust, but you've got to have
a little common sense that goes along with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, trust, but verify and treat your your passwords and
your computer like it's a National Security Administration asset and
act accordingly.
Speaker 4: Right, that's exactly right, spot up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you know, I don't leave I never leave
my phone around, even though the screen might be locked
or whatever, I will never leave it around, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, you're all of our smartphones.
Speaker 1: That's that's the problem, right, It's they're they're smart, and
they house a tremendous amount of non public information or
most sensitive data.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. All right, Well, I'm glad we had
this talk because the who the heck knows anybody, and
I mean anybody with a decent credit score and even
a n side decent credit score can be a victim
of identity theft.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and one of the things everyone needs to know,
and I have mentioned this before on the show, one
of the hangovers and good things that you know we
got from the pandemic in the COVID era was access.
Speaker 4: To our credit reports. So BC.
Speaker 1: Before COVID, we had one free look every twelve months
at Annualcreditreport dot Com. Again that's Annualcreditreport dot Com. We
had access to our reports once a year. Now you
can check your reports once a week. And I don't
think you have to be that crazy, but you should
be checking your reports on a regular basis, maybe monthly.
Speaker 4: And one of the the main.
Speaker 1: Reasons for that is exactly that you're looking for red
flags of identity theft.
Speaker 4: And your listeners need to know that.
Speaker 1: One of the easiest red flags to spot are addresses,
previous addresses or addresses associated with your name and social
Security number that you don't recognize because one of the
first things that these bad actors do is they try
and get addresses tied to your name your social Security number.
So if and when they're successful at opening up new accounts,
that information goes.
Speaker 4: To a different address, not your address. So the so the.
Speaker 1: Sooner you're made aware of the identity theft situation, the
easier and faster it will be to resolve that situation.
But unfortunately, you have cases where the people didn't realize
that they were victims of identity theft for months, if
not years. And that really really makes it difficult to recover.
The average person spends about two years trying to resolve
identity theft issues.
Speaker 3: How fast can you do that for people? Can you
get it done?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: We expedite it because unless you have a full time
staff that's working eight nine ten hours a day like
we do, it's not easy. And people have to take
off work, they miss time at work. They're suffering on
that side of things. So it takes a tremendous amount
of time. You would think, Gerry, that it would be
very easy to just say, listen, it wasn't me, I
was a victim of identity theft. Please remove it from
my credit report, Please cancel the account, refund my money.
It's not that easy. You have to respect the credit
bureros themselves. You have to prove that you're a victim
of identity theft. You have to get a police report,
you have to file the police report. Look, the reality
is no one really ever gets caught. A few of
these identity thieves actually get caught and convicted, but we
don't need the outcome. We just need a copy of
the credit report. That will help greatly expedite the process.
So again, unfortunately for us, we spend a tremendous amount
of time in the office dealing with this for for
our clients, and we can cut that time down, you know,
to days and weeks instead of months and years for
people to resolve the issues.
Speaker 3: All right, that's really good to know. Appreciate you coming
on the show as ol is.
Speaker 4: Paul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just tell us again where we find you go
to better qualified dot com again, that's better qualified dot com,
all right.
Speaker 3: And the links in the show notes of this interview
on Financial Survival Network dot com. Make sure you stop
by there sign up for a free free newsletter. Paul,
is a pleasure having you on. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Gary, thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial
Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the latest,
go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now
more than ever,