http:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/audio\/2012\/03\/identity-theft-nova-dc-public-safety\/<\/a><\/p>\n[Audio Begins]<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety.\u00a0 I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today’s program is about identity theft, and back at our microphones, Will Marling, the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, www.trynova.org.\u00a0 Will’s been at our microphones before, and it’s always a pleasure to have him back. With Will today is Denise Richardson.\u00a0 She is a consumer advocate, ID theft and education specialist, and, again, that’s going to be the meaning of the show. To Will and to Denise, welcome to DC Public Safety.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Hey, thanks, Len.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 Yes, thank you for having us.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Now, Denise bear with me for a second.\u00a0 Will and I were talking before the show about a couple things.\u00a0 Number one, Victim’s Rights Week is coming up in April, and I certainly do want to mention that.\u00a0 Also, Will, the National Organization for Victim’s Assistant that has been around since 1975.\u00a0 You now have been given the task of certifying all victims’ advocates within the Department of Defense, correct?<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 That’s right.\u00a0 Yeah, just a recent decision by the Department of Defense is for us to become the secretariat to certify their victim advocate.\u00a0 So we’re extremely honored, I have to say.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 That is wonderful.\u00a0 That is wonderful and that’s a huge undertaking.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Well, it is.\u00a0 It’s an important one.\u00a0 It’s a demonstration of the military’s commitment to victim assistance, and it’s also their recognition of I think the important work that this organization has done historically as well as today.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Now you guys have been certifying victim’s rights specialist for quite some time.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 We have.\u00a0 The National Organization for Victim Assistance is the secretariat for the National Advocate Credentialing Program.\u00a0 It started in 2003.\u00a0 So that’s a \u2013 it’s similar \u2013 it’s credentialing certification.\u00a0 It’s all kind of — they look very similar but we provide a credential.\u00a0 We’re the secretariat for that National Allied Professional Credential, and of course we’re honored to be part of that as well.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Oh, I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s an immense undertaking.\u00a0 But I can’t say that this is immense and it’s not that I\u2019m not excited about that but the Federal Constitutional Victim’s Rights Amendment is back on the radar screen, and I find that to be wonderful.\u00a0 I mean one of the things that the public needs to know is that there are a lot of State Constitutional Amendments for victim’s rights.\u00a0 36?\u00a0 Correct?<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 33 I think technically.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 33.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Three fifths of our nation’s states, that’s right, have it in their constitution.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Now, but we tried a federal constitutional amendment, victims’ rights amendment before but it lost just by a couple votes, right?<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Well, yeah, the attempt was to start with the Senate, and it was just two votes shy of cloister in the Senate, and of course that stopped it.\u00a0 But we think the momentum, the timing, there’s so many things that have come together today, right now, for a victims’ rights amendment, you know, a 28th amendment to the United States Constitution to affirm victim’s rights.\u00a0 And we’re — to be honest, we think it serves the nation to do this.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well, it’s something certainly the hope for it is certainly something to pray for because you know the fact of victims within the criminal justice system \u2013 you know, I’ve been around in the system for 42 years.\u00a0 We haven’t done the best of jobs in terms of taking care of victims.<\/p>\n
Will Marling: Well, yeah, that’s right. I mean, I many times say the system is designed to get the results that it gets.\u00a0 People just don’t realize that many times it works the way it’s actually designed.\u00a0 So when you think about redesigning it, that’s one dimension.\u00a0 Sometimes it truly doesn’t function meaningfully.\u00a0 And at the end of the day, who’s the biggest stakeholder in this?\u00a0 It really is the victims.\u00a0 There are others impacted including communities.\u00a0 But certainly the victims need to have that voice, and we believe a constitutional amendment in the United States Constitution would provide that social grounding as well as the legal framework for affirming socially the needs of crime victims and the consistent service that they deserve at every level.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 You know I’ve talked to a variety of people who have been in the criminal justice system who victim’s advocacy was something that they were partial to.\u00a0 They certainly were not against it.\u00a0 But it was not first on their radar screen until they or a family member became a victim of crime.\u00a0 When they walked through the experience directly as a victim or being very close to somebody who was a victim of crime, their attitudes changed remarkably.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00a0 I mean, it’s the doctor becoming the patient.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Yes, that’s exactly right.\u00a0 That’s exactly right.\u00a0 All right, but the program today is about undoubtedly theft. It’s one of the things that always is on my mind.\u00a0 It is always on the mind of people throughout the country.\u00a0 And I do want to reintroduce Denise Richardson.\u00a0 She’s a long time consumer advocate and author of “Give Me Back My Credit!”\u00a0 The victim of identity theft herself, Richardson set out to research the effects of this kind of theft and became a certified identity theft management specialist and trained and certified by the National Institute of Fraud and Risk Management.\u00a0 Denise, this concept of identity theft, who within this country does identity theft not touch?\u00a0 You can talk about burglary.\u00a0 You can talk about sexual assault.\u00a0 You can talk about violence.\u00a0 You can talk about theft.\u00a0 And that affects individual pieces of the population.\u00a0 Identity theft, that issue belongs to everybody in the country.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 It belongs to everyone in our country, and it effects everyone in the world, because, unfortunately, as victims of this crime in this country, a lot of it can come from outside the country, and it makes it really tough on law enforcement to be able to even have the resources or ability to hold them accountable, to stop it.\u00a0 So it allows the crime to just explode and grow in all sorts of ways.\u00a0 From across the country, in the country and it hits everyone.\u00a0 And one thing I’d like to say is congrats, Will, on all of your efforts because NOVA is one of the organizations that stepped out to realize that identity theft is a traumatic event.\u00a0 And it can leave scars, whether they’re visible scars or not, and those scars can serve as a reminder of the pain that can last a lifetime.\u00a0 If somebody has your social security number and is able to commit crimes and do other things in your name, it can literally take a lifetime to get through.\u00a0 So for NOVA to come out and say, yes, this is a traumatic \u2013 can be a traumatic crime and there are victims, I just applaud your efforts in doing this.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 www.givemebackmycredit.com is the Website for Denise Richardson.\u00a0 Denise, now, the people listening to this, they are members of the criminal justice system, members of the public.\u00a0 What’s the one thing that we need to know straight from the very beginning of the program?\u00a0 What do we need to understand about identity theft that we don’t understand about it now?<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 One of the frustrating points that I see over and over when I hear from other victims of this crime is that they didn’t know.\u00a0 They didn’t know it could be this bad.\u00a0 They didn’t know this could happen to them.\u00a0 They didn’t know \u2013 they had credit monitoring.\u00a0 So they thought just by monitoring their credit reports they would have known.\u00a0 But you wouldn’t know if someone’s hijacked your tax return, if somebody is committing violent crimes in your name.\u00a0 You wouldn’t know this.\u00a0 So, to me, the number one thing is more education on today’s identity theft trends and the types of risks and impact it can have, because often I see it downplayed in the media that, oh, if a stats gone down, if there’s a statistic that’s gone down in one area, you would never \u2013 if you look at it this way, you would never say to yourself, “Crime’s gone down in our neighborhood, so I think I’ll leave my doors unlocked now.”\u00a0 And that’s the type of message I think continues to come across because that’s what I hear from the consumers who turn victims and say, “Why didn’t I know about this? I always heard it wasn’t a big thing and the credit card companies would just take care of it for you.”\u00a0 But there’s the problem.\u00a0 Not all the crimes that are committed today are credit related.\u00a0 Yet people are still equating the crime with just America’s credit card and the banks will take care of it for you, so I would say education.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 When we’re talking about identity theft across the board, we’re not just talking about our credit cards.\u00a0 We’re not just talking about our social security number.\u00a0 We’re talking about every little piece of paper that is attached to us.\u00a0 And I had somebody the other day, a pretty prominent person, came to me and said, “Oh, my God, my name and my \u2013 where I live and everything else is available on a Website.\u00a0 How could that possibly be?”\u00a0 And I said, “Well, they pull from public records.\u00a0 Have you bought a house?”\u00a0 He says yes.\u00a0 Well, all that information in terms of who you are and where you live is a matter of public information.\u00a0 That’s startling to a lot of people.\u00a0 But so there’s \u2013 number one there’s a lot of publicly available information on you out there.\u00a0 We participate in Facebook.\u00a0 We participate in Google Plus.\u00a0 We set up a Google profile.\u00a0 There are public records that apply to us.\u00a0 So from the very beginning people need to understand that a lot of information is publicly available about you off the internet, and thieves can go from there and get the rest of it, correct?<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00a0 And these identity thieves have gotten sophisticated, and if you remember, that’s their job, to sit on Facebook or Twitter or wherever they can get a wide range of information, hack into large databases, whatever it is.\u00a0 And they can take small bits of information that you have on your profile and put it together with other information that’s public, say, your property records or whatever.\u00a0 So they use that information.\u00a0 They sell it to other scammers who use it and then pretend to strike up a conversation with you or know you or connect with you, whatever it may be.\u00a0 A small little bit of information can turn into the key that unlocks the door to every other bit of information, and you wouldn’t even know it.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Okay, now that we sufficiently scared the dickens out of everybody listening to the program, because I think identity theft is huge.\u00a0 I think it is beyond measurement.\u00a0 Will, do we have a sense as to how many Americans are impacted by identity theft on a yearly basis?<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Well, we do.\u00a0 I mean the Consumer Sentinel Network, which is the Federal Trade Commission’s report; they indicate that for 2011 there were 1.8 million complaints.\u00a0 Now what’s important to recognize\u2014<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 But not everybody complains.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Well that’s what’s important to recognize.\u00a0 I mean in terms of uniform crime reporting, identity theft is one of those crimes that doesn’t actually get reported.\u00a0 You can sort of speculate and extrapolate.\u00a0 We know it’s a lot worse than that.\u00a0 I mean, come on, partly because you are obligated as a victim to report.\u00a0 Secondly, sometimes law enforcement actually won’t take a report, and even if they do, they might not know what to do with it.\u00a0 But the challenge becomes just even collecting that information. So we always encourage people, tell the FTC, file a police report if you can because at the very least we need to know what’s going on.\u00a0 What’s important to know is that, with the latest report, credit card fraud is only 14 percent of what’s going on here.\u00a0 Government documents benefits fraud is 27 percent.\u00a0 So when people say, “Oh, identity theft is just about credit card, and I had that happen, and the bank said they’d take care of it.”\u00a0 Well that’s another issue.\u00a0 The banks not necessarily going to report for you that there was another identity theft even though that’s what occurred.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 What do you mean by government documents?<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Government documents, anything pertaining to a government document, for instance, getting a driver’s license in the name of somebody or getting government services in the name of somebody, filing a tax return in the name of somebody to get a $2,000 refund.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Do they really do that?\u00a0 They’ll file tax returns?<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Oh, absolutely.\u00a0 I mean it’s a great business.\u00a0 It’s a massive business.\u00a0 You know we don’t know exactly.\u00a0 It could be $20 billion worth of business but it’s hard to quantify completely, but absolutely.\u00a0 If they get your name, social security number — you can go online right now and find people’s PDF’s of their tax returns.\u00a0 And so commonly in training I ask people you know, “Raise you hands, how many of you have a PDF of your tax return that says “Tax Return 2010″?” And people raise their hand.\u00a0 Well if you have access to somebody’s computer and you just do a basic search and say “tax return”, and it comes back, I have your tax return plus all your kids, their social security numbers, your spouse.\u00a0 See, I have all of that right there.\u00a0 And what’s a simple way to default that?\u00a0 Well rename that PDF file.\u00a0 It could be one, call it “Grape Juice Recipe” or actually take it off your computer.\u00a0 Put it on a jump drive separate but file it up somewhere.\u00a0 That’s the easiest way to thwart that potential compromise.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 You now I keep \u2013 the amazing thing about when we have these conversations about identity theft I say to myself, I’ve been in this system for 42 years.\u00a0 I have four college degrees, university degrees, and you constantly come up with stuff that I never would have thought of in terms of discussing this topic, because our taxes are filed on our computer, and we’ve done exactly what you’ve said.\u00a0 Never crossed my mind to do this.\u00a0 Never crossed my mind to name it grape juice recipe.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Well you’re a smart guy, right?\u00a0 It’s just an awareness issue.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 It is.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 I mean that’s what this will confirm.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 That’s what Denise just said.\u00a0 So, Denise, what are the prevention tips we need to get out?\u00a0 Is it okay to go to them that quickly?<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 Well I would just to expand on what Will was saying, to give you an example of how you say you hadn’t heard of this or changing your name.\u00a0 People do not know that their kids who are on Facebook and Twitter and they have their own iPhones and everything, these iPhones are nothing more than a little computer.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Oh, absolutely.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 They need to be protected as well.\u00a0 And if your kids are using your home computer and they’re sharing music, your files could be open for sharing everything.\u00a0 And that is a lot of how \u2013 you know you could be on a network in your neighborhood coffee shop and if your files are set to open and to share, anyone can get your information.\u00a0 And as far as the income tax fraud, filing fraudulent tax returns, I live in South Florida, and the FDC report that just came out named South Florida as the number one metro area for this type of crime and Florid itself as the number one, again, several years.\u00a0 And it stills strikes me that we \u2013 and the FDC came out and said two weeks after tax season opened identity theft crimes jumped 50 percent.\u00a0 And the next day \u2013 I mean this was on our front page of the paper every day for a week.\u00a0 In between that time I would read an article online by somebody out there saying, “Do we really have to worry about identity theft?\u00a0 Is it just fear mongering?”\u00a0 And in the meantime I’ve got all these emails from consumers saying, “What do I do?\u00a0 I can’t get my tax return.\u00a0 I plan to pay my property taxes with it.”\u00a0 And so I’m seeing one thing that’s reality in my life every day but then when I read this kind of information I think it is harmful.\u00a0 So I just think we need to send a better message that I think people can learn how to protect themselves better.\u00a0 There’s no way to prevent it, but you can do things and talk to your kids or your neighbors, seniors\u2014<\/p>\n
Len Sipes: Okay, I have to break because we’re way past the half way mark and I have to reintroduce both of you, and then we’ll get back to the conversation.\u00a0 Our guests today, ladies and gentlemen, Will Marling, the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, been around since 1975, www.trynova.org.\u00a0 Our other guest is Denise Richardson.\u00a0 She is a consumer advocate and a ID theft and education specialist.\u00a0 Her Website is www.givemebackmycredit.com.\u00a0 Okay, so we’re way into the second half.\u00a0 Either one of you.\u00a0 So again, what we’ve done is scared me, scared all of our listeners.\u00a0 I need to focus on what we can do.\u00a0 Is there one place that we can go to get information about this?\u00a0 Is there a one-stop service?\u00a0 Where do people go to get the information they need?<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Well, yeah, let me jump in here.\u00a0 There isn’t one place to go.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, the internet offers us access to a lot of different resources quickly, but we try to principalize this so that people build an awareness, because however you instruct people about vulnerabilities, there will always be another tool that’s used by perpetrators, a new technology or whatever.\u00a0 So we talk about raise the fruit.\u00a0 Have you ever heard the phrase “go for the low hanging fruit.”?<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 We always talk about raise your fruit because make it even that much more difficult.\u00a0 Can that stop it all?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 But why hand them your tax return on a PDF?\u00a0 Why keep all your sensitive documents on your computer when you don’t access them regularly and you can put them on a jump drive and lock them up in a box?<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well, but there has to be a mantra in terms of all of us simply need to be aware that if our kids are file sharing on computers and the bad guys have access to our computers, there’s got to be a sense that every person that is not known to you, every email, every phone call, every snail mail communication where that person is not known to you, you immediately be suspicious of it.\u00a0 I mean there’s got to be a grounding that we can start people off with.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 I agree.\u00a0 And I think it is being informed and being alert, being aware that you shouldn\u2019t’ ever give your information to anyone who is soliciting it.\u00a0 And you shouldn’t blindly trust anyone who calls your house.\u00a0 You shouldn’t trust your caller id anymore.\u00a0 You know and I say these things and people will say it’s fear mongering, but there’s where the issue lies.\u00a0 IT’s just simple education and trying to learn what you can do.\u00a0 I don’t expect a consumer out there to know fishing, smishing, vishing, skimming, spoofing, cook jacking, tab napping, all the names that people who work in it every day understand, but I’m all for \u2013 what my passion is about is just raising awareness to what you can do, what should you do.\u00a0 You should know about the latest scams.\u00a0 You should know that you shouldn’t put too much information on your profile.\u00a0 You should stop and think before you publish anything.\u00a0 Ask yourself, “If I hit this publish button and it was going to be on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow, would I do the same thing?”\u00a0 And you might stop and think about it.\u00a0 You know we tend to hide behind the screen of the computer thinking everything is, oh, just our friends see it.\u00a0 But that’s not the case.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 You mean, just my friends read my Google Plus profile?<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 Well, some people feel that just your friends are getting into your space, into your \u2013 you got your settings set one way.\u00a0 But the settings can be changed.\u00a0 They can be hacked.\u00a0 People can use the information you put in your profile.\u00a0 For example, you love lacrosse.\u00a0 You do this.\u00a0 You do that.\u00a0 And they can pretend to have those same exact interests and send you a note and say, “Hey, what school did you go to?\u00a0 This is what I did.”\u00a0 And your guard is down.\u00a0 We tend to trust, and criminals know that, so they take advantage of that trust.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Hey, you and I are both friends with Will Marling, so obviously I’ve got to be legitimate if you and I share a friendship with Will Marling.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson: I would say so, exactly.<\/p>\n
Will Marling:\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 And that’s what they think because, oh, she was sent \u2013 I can not tell you how many times I get a call from even a friend who knows that I work in this industry.\u00a0 Just a couple weeks ago somebody called and said, “I think I got myself in a world of trouble.”\u00a0 I said, “What did you do?”\u00a0 And he said, “I went to Yahoo! And it said that they were protecting me because I didn’t have \u2013 I had to re-put in my information, so I did, and then it asked for my social and I\u2014”\u00a0 And I said, “Please tell me that you didn’t give them all that.”\u00a0 He did.\u00a0 So he spent hours changing his PayPal account, this account, that account because then I found out in asking him a few questions, he has the same password.\u00a0 So if a criminal gets a hold of \u2013 hacks into one of your passwords, and they’re easy to guess because we have \u2013 we use combinations that they figured out through our public information.\u00a0 Just imagine if they hack that one password how much havoc they can create in five minutes time.\u00a0 Check to see if you have a PayPal account, if you have an Amazon account, anything.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 You’ve just made thousands of people very uncomfortable because the research says that’s exactly what we do.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 And I hope I made them uncomfortable.\u00a0 That’s the point.\u00a0 I want them to go out and say, “Oh, my gosh, I need to change my passwords.\u00a0 I need to strengthen them.”\u00a0 I did a speaking engagement at one point and I asked the people in the audience how many people use the name of their car or where they graduated or what year they graduated in their pass code.\u00a0 And over 75 percent of the people raised their hand.\u00a0 And I then explained why that wasn’t a good idea, and someone said to me, “Oh, my gosh, I do that with all of my passwords.\u00a0 I’ll use my spouses name, my spouse’s birthday, my child’s name, my dogs name because it’s so easy to remember.”\u00a0 Criminals are smart, and they know that.\u00a0 So never \u2013 unfortunately you’ve got to come up with ways to have stronger, longer, unpenetratable passwords.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 All right, but the one thing \u2013 to me this is the best suggestion of them all and that is is that anytime you get a communication from anybody that is part of your financial world, so you get an email from your bank saying your account’s been compromised.\u00a0 You get a call, an email from your credit card company saying that your account has been compromised.\u00a0 Immediately contact them independently on your own through a number and through a source that you know to be legitimate and then ask that person a question.\u00a0 So never proceed with that initial contact.\u00a0 Always go to the source.\u00a0 I’ve always found that to be the most powerful of them all.\u00a0 Am I right or wrong?<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 You’re absolutely right.\u00a0 You have to do that because a lot of these scams now will appear to come from Go Daddy or Amazon or your bank or even the U.S. Government.\u00a0 And they’ll provide you with here’s the fraud department number to call.\u00a0 We suspect something and people will panic and call that number.\u00a0 What they don\u2019t realize is they’re calling right into the thief.\u00a0 So always \u2013 so never use a phone number, and your bank is not going to email you about something like that.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Yeah, but people don’t know.\u00a0 I mean\u2014<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 –we got a phone call the other day about our credit card being misused.\u00a0 And the point is that my wife had a conversation with the credit card company regarding that, and it was very legit and very straightforward, but my wife shouldn’t have done that.\u00a0 My wife should have hung up and called the credit card company back.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 Well because sometimes what happens when they call you, they have quite a bit of information on you already, and that tends to make consumers think, oh, yes, that’s my bank because how would they know that?\u00a0 But if it really is, your bank is going to understand if you say, “You know what, I’m concerned about identity theft.\u00a0 So let me hang up and call you through the number that I have for you.\u00a0 Do you have a particular extension?”\u00a0 Something like that.\u00a0 Or if it’s legit your bank should be able to tell you your password on that account, tell you everything you want to know, not the other way around where you have to confirm it with them.\u00a0 I recently had the same thing happen to me with my bank calling about another credit card fraud.\u00a0 But today the criminals are getting even more savvy with telephone calls, using the phone to hook you into falling for anyone of their many scams.\u00a0 So if someone calls you, never give out information.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 If you post on Facebook that you’re going to Florida and then the scammer calls you up and say you know there’s \u2013evidently you’re in Florida and you have problems with your credit card, you immediately assume that this is legitimate.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 Exactly and I always tell people, oh my gosh, stop telling people where you are every minute of the day because people have been being robbed because they watch this.\u00a0 If they have enough information and they know where you live and here’s a picture of me, I’m sitting a thousand miles away on a sunny beach.\u00a0 We’re all here on vacation.\u00a0 There was just a story in the news not too long ago where the teenage daughter didn’t know that she was giving out any information like that that she shouldn\u2019t and said “Oh, we’re at the airport.\u00a0 She text right at the airport, “We’re getting on the plane.”\u00a0 Well her friend posted it and a friend of that friend, they tracked it back to because they did catch the people, robbed their house while they were gone.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Denise we have one minute left.\u00a0 What point do we need to make that we haven’t made in one minute?<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 That there are available \u2013 there’s information out there, and the best way that you can avoid becoming a crime victim is to be informed, look out for the risks and know the impact and have a plan of action.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Yeah, but there’s so much to know.<\/p>\n
Denise Richardson:\u00a0 There is.\u00a0 I mean you can’t possibly learn it in one moment. You can go to the FTC.gov site.\u00a0 They have a lot of information.\u00a0 Will’s site, I’m sure, does.\u00a0 My site at \u2013 on my site I have areas, categories for the current scams.\u00a0 I try to keep that up-to-date, the types of risk, what to do if you’re a victim.\u00a0 So there’s definitely information out there.\u00a0 And here’s something.\u00a0 If you’re ever in doubt, you get an email that you think might be a scam, type it in your browser.\u00a0 Chances are people have already written about it and learned about it.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well that’s a wonderful idea.\u00a0 All right.\u00a0 Our guests today and in terms of summarizing and it’s a lot to summarize, Will Marling, Executive Director, National Organization for Victim Assistance, www.trynova.org.\u00a0 Also with our theft identity \u2013 identity theft expert, Denise Richardson.\u00a0 She’s a consumer advocate and an ID theft and education specialist.\u00a0 Her Website is www.givemebackmycredit.com.\u00a0 It seems as if the Federal Trade Commission just Google or your favorite search engine, Federal Trade Commission and look for consumer fraud or identity theft, and there’s information there.\u00a0 What I heard today was about file sharing in terms of especially in terms of your kids and downloading music or file sharing, relabeling your computer files to be sure that if you’re hacked that the person won’t go and find your important documents.\u00a0 Be careful with social media in terms of what public information you make public, change your passwords, go to the source if you get a call from somebody or contact from somebody. Don’t continue with that.\u00a0 Just hang up and go to that source independently so you know that it is legitimate.\u00a0 Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety.\u00a0 Have yourselves a very pleasant day.<\/p>\n
[Audio Ends]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome to \u201cDC Public Safety\u201d \u2013 Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts\u00a0on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system. We currently average 90,000 page views a month. The portal site for \u201cDC Public Safety\u201d is http:\/\/media.csosa.gov. Radio Program available at http:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/audio\/2012\/03\/identity-theft-nova-dc-public-safety\/ [Audio Begins] Len Sipes:\u00a0 From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,57,46,47],"tags":[125,126,127,128],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiopodcast","category-fraud","category-identity-theft","category-internet-crime","tag-denise-richardson","tag-identity-theft-2","tag-national-organization-for-victim-assistance","tag-nova","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBoKk-cw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":779,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}