Frank Abagnale: Identity theft

[Music] morning good morning it's a pleasure to be with you this morning I wish that I could be there in person so I want to explain why I am NOT as you know I used to come to Canada for many many years I worked with Toronto business and data business forms developing and helping develop your government Treasury checks and your bonds I've spoke to many organizations including RCMP but after the movie catch me if you can came out Canadian customs would no longer allow me back in the country based on the law that says if you committed a crime you cannot come into the country so for several years I've been not able to come back to Canada but I'm glad that I'm able to reach and speak out to you today from my hometown in Charleston South Carolina as you know I've been attached to the FBI for over 42 years I've written several books on all types of crimes and three of them on identity theft what is amazing to me I guess is that what I did fifty years ago as a teenage boy is thousands of times easier to do today because of technology unfortunately technology breeds crime it always has and there always will there will always be people willing to use technology in a negative self-serving way so we've had over a billion identity stolen including mine and probably everyone in the audience as I mentioned I live in South Carolina about four years ago someone hacked into our tax revenue office and stole 3.8 million tax returns of the citizens of South Carolina including me that means they had your social security number your wife's social security number your children's social security number because you claim them as dependents if you paid your state taxes by cheque they had an image of your cheque so they knew where your bank what your account number was at the bank what your routing number was into your account that you're wiring instructions how you sign your checks or cheque number you were on and if you're paid by credit card or debit card they had that on the day the incident Kirt I was actually in the FBI field office in Phoenix Arizona saw our local TV station and Charleston tracked me down they really just wanted a comment from me about what I thought about having my identity stolen and I asked the reporter what did the state tax revenue office have to say and they said well they said they did absolutely nothing wrong my comment was that would be absolutely literally impossible every breach every breach occurs because somebody in that company did something they weren't supposed to do or somebody in that company failed to do something they were supposed to do and hackers do not cause breaches people do in the end of an investigation it turned out an employee at the tax revenue office took home a laptop they weren't supposed to take home they went online in an unrestricted area and obviously the hackers got in when we had the Equifax breach which keeps growing it started at a hundred and forty million now it's a hundred and forty eight million started out of 1 million driver's licenses now it's ten point six million drivers licenses four thousand passports again this is a company that failed to keep their technology updated failed to fix the patches that were sent to them allowing the hacker to get in I cannot overemphasize to you the importance today of teaching your employees and that's everyone from the CEO to the janitor the importance of keeping the information that's been entrusted to them safe and that comes through education there is no technology and there never will be any technology that defeats social engineering you only defeat social engineering through education so during the month of October in the United States that cyber awareness month for the last five years I've gone out five days a week every week during that month to speak to a fortune 500 company I think I wrapped up last year at Nationwide Insurance in Columbus Ohio and basically when I go out to those companies I do not park in the visitor parking lot I park in the employee parking lot and when I get out of the car I empty my pockets of memory sticks that say confidential I throw them all over the parking lot I have a tracking device on them so at lunch time in the company's cafeteria I opened my laptop to see how many employees internally went to see what that memory stick says it says this is a test and you failed I've yet to be at a company we're not more than one or more than one person has looked at that I try to explain later that I could have cost our company a billion dollars overnight and destroyed the 100-year old brand again I cannot overemphasize the importance of Education today if you get an email from the CEO down to the accounting department that says I want to review the w-2s or the tax of employees tax records that's an unusual request that person should have gotten up went up to the CEOs office and asked if they actually sent that email the emails that are getting so sophisticated because the people who put these emails out are learning so much about the individual on social media so I've seen emails that simply from the CEO to the CFO that might say Bob enjoyed dinner with you and your wife Karen last night at your beautiful home I forgot to mention to you over dinner that as you know I'm leaving to go to Nashville today and I'll be gone for a week I wanted you to wire 35,000 dollars to this charity and to do so today by noon well that's very convincing because you're sat there you did have dinner whether it me knows your wife's name but all of that came from social media we live in a way too much information world we tell people way too many things and consequently we wonder why people are stealing our identities now it'd be foolish of me to talk about this and not tell you how to protect your identity because it's as simple as it is to steal one's identity it is even simpler to protect yourself from not being a victim of that crime so I only ask people to do what I do myself first of all I do have a shredder I shred everything yesterday you got a catalog from Macy's or a department store you looked at it but you didn't want anything so you threw it away on the back cover was your name and address a barcode a source code and ID number that's all I need to become you what you think is worthless is of great value to buddy else there are basically three shredders built in the world three types are a lot of manufacturers staples fellows and many others but if you're using a straight ribbon shredder that's a ribbon shredder that cuts paper straight at the FBI laboratory in Quantico Virginia we put those documents back together in less than 30 minutes we can shred the entire Wall Street Journal and put it back together in an hour if we can do it so can the criminals many people use a crisscross shredder much better cuts paper down to a little rectangle or small box but we use a software called a puzzler that allows us to put those documents back together as we did in Enron world calm Tyco Arthur Andersen even though the shredder is shredded order to shredded thousands of pieces of material we put it back together and so can a criminal so when you go out to buy a shredder it's not so much of who made the shredder you're looking on the box for the type of shredder it is and what you're looking for is a security micro cut shredder same price as the others but that's a shredder that turns paper into confetti or about the size of a piece of rice second I do use a credit monitoring service I've used one since 1992 mainly because I believe you take responsibility for yourself so it allows me ten times a day 20 times a day to go on my keyboard and simply type in a few keys and up comes my credit report up on my screen all three Equifax Experian TransUnion at the top is my score for that time of day I can scroll down through my credit so if I see that TD Bank I had a bank loan there for a car says I still owe $2,000 but I actually paid the loan off a year ago I can fix that as I scroll down further I see all inquiries made on my credit but what we refer to as soft and hard inquiries so I see inquiries from the government tax office I see inquiries from my employer the insurance company my bank all of those inquiries the credit card companies where I might applied for a credit card and if something looks suspicious I can do something about it but also for that twelve or fourteen dollar-a-month fee they're monitoring my credit and they're letting me know in real time if someone's attempting to use my credit I don't write a lot of checks in today's environment if I were to go into drugstore tomorrow and write a check for $9 I'd have to hand the clerk to check on the check is my name and address and phone number my bank's name and address my account number at that Bank my routing number into that account that's your wiring instructions my signature on the signature card at the bank and then the clerk is written on the front center of the check my driver's license number in my date of birth obviously I don't get the check back we live in truncation so I get an image of the check the cheque has to be destroyed by who at the merchant I gave it to anyone who would see the face of that cheque could draw funds against my account they could do an account takeover by simply ordering checks through checks in the mail calm and then simply putting their name on the check and my account number and every check they write would debit against my account and finally I don't own a debit card I've never owned one never allowed my three sons to have one a long time ago I learned that the safest form of payment that exists on the face of the earth is a credit card credit card Visa MasterCard American Express Discover card not debit credit but credit every day of my life I actually literally spend the credit card companies money I never spend my money my money sits in a money market account it earns interest nobody knows where it is that has never exposed to anyone I will do everything to protect my number but if tomorrow someone were to charge a million dollars on my credit card bylaw my liability is zero when I pay the bill every month or part of the bill my credit score goes up so I keep building credit and my good name when you use a debit card every time you reach for it you're exposing the money in your account in every post investigation in the United States of the target breached the homeland homes home depot breach and every one of those afterwards people said well I was in the store but I only used a Visa card so they cancelled my card in two days later FedEx delivered me a new card and that was the last I heard about it the other person would say no I had a debit card it took $3,000 out of my checking account it took me three months why they said they are investigating to get my money back so a lot of young people unfortunately they only use a debit card they go to college for four years they graduate they come out and look for an apartment and the manager says son you have no credit you don't even have a credit file with a credit bureau so you're gonna have to have your parents co-sign the lease so I had three sons that went off to college I told them I wasn't going to give him a debit card but that I had applied for a credit card in their name their card of course they were 18 they didn't have any credit so I guaranteed the card and that allowed three things one it allowed me to get a card in their name it allowed me to set the limit on that card and it also allowed me to pay that bill every month see how what they were spending what were they were doing at school but when I paid that bill every month it went on their credit so by the time they graduated from college they had credit scores up in the 800s one of the best things you can do for your kids I'm happy to say that there is a new technology and I would appreciate it when any of you have time to just bring up the website for a company called truth Sona that's t ru s ona standing for true persona you know for years I have said that we have got to get rid of passwords this is a 1964 technology that we are using today around the world in 2018 passwords or why we have all the problems that we have today true Sona is a technology that does away with the need for a password it works off of your phone so that feel worth drawing money from an ATM you literally just pull up to the ATM hit the app on your phone for your bank put your phone up to the screen and you're in you don't need a card you don't need a password it's been used now by hundreds of banks it's being used all over the world it's being used by insurance companies as well as being used internally by banks - so why are money from a huge accounts and large sums it is an amazing technology I had the opportunity to work on the technology as an advisor as I have many technologies over my 42 years but I've never worked on a technology that had such promise today to finally bring us to an era where usernames and passwords will be a thing of the past and you will not have to use a debit card or a card to get into your bank or to get information you will simply use your phone and our phone of course is going to be the way that we do business whether we like it or not everything is going to be eventually tied to our phone my website is just my name I sell no products I provide no services it's just Abagnale calm but i do put tremendous amount of information up there every day about all types of things embezzlement check forgery counterfeiting identity theft cyber crimes and you'll find a great deal of information to help you protect your family your personal access and your business thanks to payments Canada for having me from Charleston South Carolina it's been a pleasure spending the morning with you this is Frank Abagnale have a great day you

Channel: Payments Canada

Views: 11,667

Rating: 4.936842 out of 5

Keywords: Digital ID, Cyber-security, Identity theft

Id: gxggnWqSALQ

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Tue May 15 2018