Help! Someone Stole My Identity!
Deepfakes, AI and Traditional Identity Theft
It has been some time since we last wrote an article here on Substack. We love our community, our families and work we find ourselves in and try to not write about the same things many in the security field write on. However, with the fast paced changes in technology, how much easier it is to assume someone else’s identity with a little leg work, we feel our team should put together some information on updates in the industry, how technology is being weaponized and used to steal your identity and steps you can take to mitigate being a victim as well as immediate steps you should take that are free, should you find yourself an unfortunate victim.
The proactive steps should also be taken to protect your children and elderly family members as well, as we see just a continuing rise where no identity is truly not a target for criminals.
Background
Did you notice the photo at the top of the blog? While it is a stock photo, our goal was to capture something beyond ones and zeros, something more than a standard image of a computer or padlock as the devastation and ripple effect of many of these cases brings on a lot of despair and brokenness to everyone impacted, including kids and their families.
Who is a Target?
Anyone is fair game to criminals, whether you are single, young, elderly, a child or have a young family or even a successful business owner.
While in many cases identity theft is committed by strangers unknown to us, there are many cases we have worked at Signature Peace of Mind Advisors, where the thief was a former partner or relative.
How Can Someone Get My Personal Information?
With the proliferation of data breaches in the news daily, just take a moment and consider the amount of information you share day to day on social media and with various stores you shop at:
1. A majority of identity thieves leverage data from social media that people freely share and the other major data source are dark web sites where hacked information is shared and sold like oil.
2. If it was a former or current partner, typically personal information is shared after certain points such as social security numbers during tax season or passwords for banking or other accounts. In many cases, when relationships end in divorce or a break up, the last thing on most people’s minds are the fact their former partners know this information and can commit fraud like open credit cards, bank accounts or even drain your life savings as a couple of real life examples we have seen.
Quick Wins to Reduce Your Risk
What to do after a break up:
Immediately after a break up, take stock of all accounts you own from banking, retirement, phone, icloud, email etc and ensure you remove your ex as a back up recovery method anywhere that they were set up as one.
1. Change your password/pin code on all devices and apps.
2. Never reuse your password and consider using a password manager to create unique ones for each account.
3. Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) using an app based or hardware token like yubikey.
4 Lie. Yes sometimes it is OK.
Some accounts use security questions as a form of verification. If you’ve been with someone who has grown to know you well, another way to lock them out of your account is to lie about your real answers to those security questions. Just keep a record of those lies hidden somewhere accessible yet safe so you don’t end up locked out yourself like in a safe or password vault
5. Reset and reclaim your computing and smart devices
Here is a guide we put together to check your settings on many popular services and social media accounts.
Reducing Identity Theft Risk in General:
While it seems impossible to prevent all risk, through lifestyle and behavior changes, we can greatly reduce our risk to identity thieves online and even at the gas pump or going about our daily lives shopping, eating out, etc.
Get a digital footprint review - this is where you can take simple steps such as googling yourself and seeing what information is out there about you and your family and proactively and manually go through and erase what you can.
We have an excellent and robust offering to help take that burden off where we constantly scan for our personal information and have it deleted 24/7 starting around $200 a year, which is far cheaper than the aftermath of a data breach plus saves hundreds of hours.
Invest in a password manager with multi-factor set up using a mobile app and not text based codes.
When shopping online, consider using burner cards such as those from privacy.com which greatly reduces your chances of being further compromised should a store end up with a data breach.
Develop a privacy first lifestyle where if you really pause and decide if that store, website or app really needs that information or access to your devices. (We love working with our clients to coach them on different steps they can take in their own life that are easy to adopt to reduce their risks day to day without being overly burdensome, just send us a message and you will have a personal advisor you can lean on).
Leverage services that can monitor for your information being found in data breach websites.
Keep an eye on your credit reports and lock them down. If you suspect fraud, put a note on each credit file as well so creditors are aware of the fraud you are experiencing. Do this for the kids in your life as well, fraud can start early and by the time they grow up and need to start building credit, the damage could have been done.
If you believe you have been a victim of identity theft
If you believe you have been victimized, there are a number of steps you should take to stem the bleed or slow down the fraud:
Immediately contact all of your banks and cancel any cards and order new ones if they have been impacted.
Head on over to the FTC website to report the fraud immediately and follow the step by step instructions they provide you.
3. Contact us at Signature Peace of Mind Advisors for support and we can help assess where the breach may have come from and provide next steps as well and advise on securing your accounts and devices. We also are able to help review certain accounts and devices to determine if the compromise has impacted anything you own and provide written statements for law enforcement, lawyers and any other agency you may need help with.
Be sure to subscribe to catch the next in this series on how Artificial intelligence is enabling these scams to escalate much faster and how to protect yourself, your families and even your business.
Want help being proactive with your own privacy and security? We have custom solutions and options for you! Reach out today for your free consultation at kenneth@spmadvisors.net.