Help Me With Sign Pennsylvania Banking Presentation

Help me with industry sign banking pennsylvania presentation secure

great thank you john uh welcome everybody presentation on cyber security keeping yourself safe online and as a little added bonus we're going to talk a little bit about romance scams probably uh well not probably according to uh to the experts probably it's the largest scam the largest money-making scam in five states including the the commonwealth of of pennsylvania so we're going to talk about that a little bit as well since i mean we're we're now past valentine's day but still love is still in the air so to speak but starting with cyber security keeping yourself safe online as john said my name is george dillman i'm the consumer outreach specialist with the pennsylvania department of banking and securities so what is cyber security i think we all know this doesn't hurt to cover it cyber security is keeping everything you do on the internet safe so that no one can steal your information for their own gain again i think we know this but again it doesn't hurt to to rehash it a little bit why is cyber security important whether you use the internet all the time or on occasion keeping yourself protected is important and this is what we're going to be talking about today in this portion of the presentation safe web browsing online shopping mobile devices strong passwords social media and identity theft so first let's start with a clean slate we want to use the most recent versions or of browsers and operating systems we want to keep our anti-virus and other software uh up to date as well as these uh things become older they come become more vulnerable to cyber attacks so we need to keep them updated on a regular on a regular basis a lot of our devices in fact maybe all of our devices now we can set up automatic updates i think i have that on all of my computing devices and it's good to do that whether we have it uh we have it set up automatically or we do it manually we want to um we want to keep these these uh devices uh up to date on a regular basis because again as they get older they get more vulnerable to cyber attacks safe surfing encrypted websites versus unencrypted websites https instead of http http we go to a website say we're on one of our favorite retail big box retailer websites we're doing some shopping we go to the site and up in the uh in the web address we should see http colon forward slash forward slash www dot and then whatever the the the actual address is for the big big box retailer we're going on we're going around we're shopping around we put a couple things in our basket we go to check out we're now going to exchange some sensitive information with uh with that company on that page we rather than http we should now see https the sdns were secure uh we need to when when we see that s we know that everything that we're exchanging at that point is now safe and secure in fact a lot of sites now more and more and some of the bigger like retailers or or other companies i'm going on to it looks like they're automatically secure you'll automatically see that https which is a good thing meaning everything that you're doing now uh is secure or should be secure as far as what you're doing on that website sometimes we'll also see that little padlock on the right-hand side so uh you know certainly look out for that especially when it comes time to exchanging that sense of information check the privacy policy companies should have it should be found somewhere on on the on a website may have to look for it a little bit but that basically tells you uh you know how that company collects your information stores your information key and and keeps that information secure um securely stores it as well as whether they're uh selling it to third parties or not and a lot of times we'll see this now companies that want to make sure that that we know they're not selling our information onto third parties and they'll let us know that you know somewhere review the trust seal a lot of times you'll see that red shield with the with the white check mark on it meaning basically meaning this is a trusted site it's not always given out for that reason but a lot of times it is so a lot of time you know when you see that shield it should mean that that the that cypher site is safe and secure and maybe has a good privacy policy a good secure privacy policy in place to take it to keep your your information safe and secure clear your browser history we want to check check our browser for instructions each browser is going to be different you know a lot of times it starts with settings and maybe once we go through settings one or two uh one or two clicks and we're to our browsing history every page that we go on there's a there's there's a like a snapshot of that page kept and we can go into our history and see every page going back uh you know with with information on including information that we've exchanged we can and we should clear out those those browsing histories on a regular basis you know if somebody does happen to break into our computer that's one uh source that they can use to get in to get in from our information and to use it against us so it's recommended we clear out those browsing histories every every so often using wi-fi safely at home and in public at home be sure to keep your router secure with a strong password and do not share that password with with just anybody now again that could be a no-brainer oh no george i'm going to give my password out to every stranger that passes by no but even with people that we know i conduct i also conduct a presentation on avoiding scams and identity theft and i mentioned that presentation that a lot of times it's the people that are closest to us that that that will steal our identity and use it against us you know family members friends co-workers somebody who has access to our information so you know along those lines we want to be careful with with who who we share our our passwords with um and other important information in public using public wi-fi can be risky avoid financial and personal transaction a lot of these public wi-fi systems have little to to no security uh so we have to be very careful in using them now in a later slide we're going to talk about how we can we could certainly avoid that password do's and don'ts we're going to start with password don'ts we on this page is a password that is still commonly used no matter how many times we we hear not to use that this password it's still one that's commonly used what is the password password or password one other commonly used passwords are qwerty which is the top row of keys on a keyboard abc123 sequential numbers um and you know other things such as names birthdates phrases or other easy to guess words we certainly want to stay away from and here's an example say i have a cat my cat's name is princess fluffy and i love my princess fluffy i'm all i'm always talking about her to all my my friends and i'm posting pictures of her on social media so all six thousand of my friends and you can't see me but i'm doing friends with the finger quotes because how many of us really have that many friends a lot of times these so-called friends or scammers are looking they're friending us and other people looking to get information from us um so we have to be we have to be careful with that so you know again i'm brag i'm always bragging about princess fluffy on the social media sites post pictures so the last thing i want to do you know when i create a password is use princess fluffy or princess fluffy1 what we do want to do first of all the longer the better experts say we should we should make our passwords at least eight to ten characters we should use capital letters lowercase letters numbers and even non-alphanumeric characters like pound pound signs and exclaim exclamation points um some oh and we want to change our passwords especially to our most vulnerable accounts on a regular basis we need to keep them keep them updated um i had a situation once where um you know because the longer they sit out there the the the longer somebody has to figure those passwords out i had a password that i used at one time and i used that password for every site that i went on to which is another thing we should we should do we want to use a different password for each site that we go on to because if somebody does figure out our password well now they have our password for every site that we go on because we're using the same one but somebody uh somebody contact me at some point this password that i used uh a couple years prior to getting this email i stopped using that password i i started using different passwords on different sites i started changing my passwords and i got away from that password but some point somebody got a hold of me basically trying to extort money from me and they said oh here's your password and then they had it printed right there the password that i thought would never be figured out somebody somehow got it and and sent it to me and looking to get uh again looking to export money from me because what else do we have on you what else were you gonna do well little do they know i wasn't using it anymore but bottom line is they can figure these out so we want to change those passwords on a regular basis our email password may be the most important so we need to keep them changed um i love this slide a co-worker of mine updated this uh presentation for us and she created this new slide on creating strong passwords i love this slide and it just shows how we can we can take a weak password and make it a very strong password on the left hand side and right in the middle i'm going to use the word password as it's normally spelled or how we could normally spell it with a capital p and the rest of the word is is lowercase very risky very easy for somebody to for somebody to to figure out um but we go to the better option the better password uh password one in this case the the one is put in front of of the word password and we have a small p a small a we're using two capital s's rather than lowercase word is all lowercase we have an exclamation point at the end if we're still trying to memorize it we're still using password one but we changed it up a little bit we made it harder for somebody to be able to figure it out then we go to the best option on the right hand side and as you can see we're using the number one we're using a lowercase p we're using the at sign rather than an a but it still looks like an a right but we're using the at sign we're using two dollar signs rather than capital s's but again we're trying to memorize it still looks like capital s's we're using a lowercase w a zero rather than an o lowercase r a capital d and an exclamation point again we're still using password one but we've made it very difficult now for somebody to figure out we can do these with with all kinds of different words you know names and birth dates and then we just change them up that we it makes it very difficult for somebody to figure out it may be easy for us to memorize them choosing security questions same same thing as passwords we want to stay away from the easily figured out uh security questions um you know we we want to stay away from like our mother's maid name our favor our pet's name right security question what's your favorite pet's name everybody knows my favorite pet's name is princess fluffy so very easy to figure out so you know use use security questions that would be very difficult for somebody to to figure out create your own questions if you can you know some sites are now allowing you to create your own questions i've often suggested right i suggest in these presentations that maybe we use security questions but we uh but we uh we yeah we we use security questions but maybe nonsensical answers to those security questions that then nobody would be able to figure them out and here's the example mother's maiden name blue tricycle 29 well my mother's maiden name is not blue tricycle 29 and it would be very difficult for somebody to figure that out and and then so i use that they i do those nonsensical answers for all my security questions i just keep them in a safe place along with my passwords that i create my different passwords for each site by the way we can we can use password managers on our computing devices and these password managers can store manage and even create strong passwords for us if we want to do that me i'm a big believer in the old-fashioned pen and paper i keep them all written down along with my security answers and i keep them in a nice safe place to refer to when i need to phishing emails don't open it do you know the sender check the grammar and spelling when in doubt delete it at one time uh we we got a lot more emails uh you know where it looked the the email almost looked like they tried to look professional and it almost looked like a third grader had written the email poor grammar poor spelling no capital letters where there should be capital letters so on and so forth uh scammers have come a long way since then they've become a lot more a lot smarter a lot more sophisticated a lot more intelligent a lot better at creating very professional looking looking emails um you know that can and maybe to that match companies that we're already dealing with you know for example my my local bank the bank that i i bank with uh right it'd be very easy for somebody to use photoshop copy and paste and they make this email that looks looks official looks like it came from my my bank and i get an email from susie at my at my local bank which is your bank and the their say their web address is yourbank.com so i get an email from susie at your bank.com and uh hello mr dillman uh we're um we're updating our records and we i just need to confirm some information with you or we just need to confirm your information with you can you hit this link and go to the next to the next page and on that page i'm going to need you to confirm all your information so we can keep our records up to date so i go to the next page and i confirm my name my address my telephone number social security number date of birth all my bank account information you know everything that somebody would would need to to steal my identity and or to just give my information use it against me to get into them into my account um you know the email says it came from susie at my local bank but how do i how do i really know um you know it's it says it's from her but but we don't know so we have to be careful with these things we have to be careful who we get uh emails from the attachments that we get along with those emails we hid in a an attachment or even a link and and without knowing it we download malicious software to our computer that allows uh some cyber criminals to come in or maybe come in later without us knowing about it coming in a later date uh to to take whatever they want off of our computer so we have to be careful maybe reach out to to someone by telephone to see if they actually sent this information you know uh just to be sure or we get an email from a friend of ours and uh and they want us to open up an attachment hey take a look at this tell me what you think about it oh hey this is my friend john and it came from johnson how do we know if somebody didn't hack into john's email account maybe very easily and is cut reaching out to to all of john's contacts and now i open this up this attachment and once again i have some malicious software being downloaded my to my computer so we have to be careful we want to check in check it make sure that they they did come from where they say they came from another thing that we can do when we get emails or even going to websites is this thing called the hovering technique um there's my arrow where's my air there's my arrow everyone sees my arrow at the top of the screen so what you're doing is you're going to hover you're not going gonna click on the email address but with your arrow you're gonna hover over top of the email address and in that email address we see where the email says it came from we hover over that email address and a box should uh should pop up and in that box could be additional information plus the the email address where it actually came from now in that scenario with susie at your bank m you know i i see it came from susie yourbank.com i hover over susie's email address and i look in the box okay this actually this came from susie at yourbank.com but in another scenario i hover over that email address and it's again it says it came from your bank.com but the box that in the box that pops up it says johnnyscammer at scammersrs.com i'm being a little silly but i think everyone knows where i'm going with this work you know if it's a different email address be careful be impact probably delete it because again it you know they want to hide where this email actually came from we can do the same thing with uh with websites you uh say i get directed to a website my favorite big box retailer website and um uh and yeah website and uh oh fit big sale 50 off everything for the next three hours oh wow i better go i i hit the link i go to the website and i'm shopping around i'm putting stuff in the shopping cart i check out i give them all my information only to find out at a later at a later date a later point that it's a fake website that somebody set up to lure me and how many other people do we can do the same thing we hover over we get to that website we hover over the web address and rather than bigboxretailer.com again it says scammers in the box that pops up it says scammers rs.com so this is something we could do to to uh to uh be aware you know of of a fake email fake website we also have to be careful with those subtle differences and again here's the example with the email i get that email from susie yourbank.com i hover it and and her email address is all one word yourbank.com i hover over the email address the box pops up okay it says susie you're at yourbank.com wait a second in the box that popped up it says susie at your dashbank.com that one extra thing that one extra thing in there that dash makes the difference to as to where it says it came from as to where it actually came from so we have to look for those subtle differences as well um maybe uh and again the same thing with the web address maybe the web address we we hover over it maybe in the web address it's it's uh you know big big box retailer dot com and then in the and the actual web address big box boxes two x's on it just to make it a little different so we hover over it pops up okay uh big box retailer dot com oh wait a second there's only one x in the box and and the actual website because i know this has two x's so again they took away something and again that one subtle difference could be uh is the difference between where you're where you think you're at versus where you're actually at so we so to keep an eye out for that as well online shopping familiar and reputable sites for um versus new websites obviously the familiar the reputable uh want sites that we go to you know certainly continue shopping maybe we want to do that hovering technique even if it's just practice to make sure we're on the actual site um new websites certainly we want to we want to look into before we use any new sites that we're not familiar with because again there's a lot of phony websites out there not just uh people pretending to be actual sites but uh creating phony websites to lure people to to to get steal their information real life example i i well i used to use a website where you go to this website and on this website you can connect to all these retailers you can link to their websites and if you do that through this website you get points you can turn the points into prizes i assumed that every retailer on that and a lot of them were well-known retailers walmart target amazon and so on and so forth but then you had others that weren't so well known that weren't familiar but i assumed that of course we know what happens when you assume uh but i assumed that they were they were all screened out they were all legitimate sites and i i ended up being wrong i found a website i was a company i wasn't familiar with but again i'm assuming it assumed it was it was it was legit i went to the site i found the item that i wanted at a really good price of course later on i found out why it was a really good price and i made my co so-called purchase a couple weeks later i get contacted by the credit card company hello mr dillman um i'm calling from your credit card company i just we just need to know are you currently in anchorage alaska and did you purchase flowers um for someone in juneau alaska no i didn't and i know the company uh we're we're calling about again this was a fake website that was set up by some scammer to steal my information and other people's informations and to to use their credit card so in that case i i got in uh put in contact with the uh i got in i put i got put in contact with the with the with their fraud department most companies have them nowadays and if we if we in a compromise situation like that somebody uh whatever this whatever the the company is there there's a loan that i have out and i found i found out the loan was extended and an additional ten thousand dollars was taken out and i know i didn't do it same thing but we reach out to the company where that compromise took place the federal trade commission tells us to do this by the way they said the first thing we should do is to reach out to the company where the compromise took place and start working with their fraud department to clear our names of uh you know in this case with the credit card to cancel the card get a new card issue and issued and cancel any charges including those those lovely flowers i bought for somebody in juneau alaska off the card do we need to go through that hassle though no so before we use the site let's do do a little bit of research let's make sure the site is legit you know google the name of the company uh along with complaints or scams and see what what if anything comes up read reviews research through the better business uh bureau uh ask around so on and so forth do our due diligence to you know to and make sure that a site is legit before we use it uh and and maybe one of the reasons why we want to use credit cards rather than than uh debit cards credit cards are even those third parties like a paypal type thing um you know where you have that buffer between you and the person that the money is is actually going to but credit card versus debit card um i hope nobody minds me using a gambling term but with a credit card we're kind of playing with house money so to speak until we actually pay the bill until we actually get the bill and pay the bill we haven't paid anything for it yet with a debit card it's almost like handing the cash over now from what i've been hearing it's been ease people who use debit cards it's been easier and easier to retrieve those funds that they've lost but it still might be easier using a credit card versus a debit card with with those purchases remember earlier tips about keeping devices safe keep them updated keep keep your website secure excuse me and use a strong password and again a separate password for every site that we go to we use the same password they some somehow somebody does figure out that password they now have our password for every site that we go to social media social media is big it's getting bigger it's here to stay a lot of us are using social media we just have to be careful staying safe while posting liking or sharing uh don't accept every friend request do any of us really need 6 000 friends um we we have to be careful with just accepting any and all friend requests because there are scammers out there that will pose as a supposed friends uh to try to get information from us you know maybe try to trick us into giving them information and here's an example you know hey friend how you doing uh hey when's your birthday uh i want to send you an e-birthday card the next time it's your birthday oh here okay here you go friend now i just gave somebody that i don't really know my date of birth uh they already have my name maybe there's probably a good chance they have my address maybe they got that a couple months earlier and at some point they they get enough information on me that they can use it against me they can use to steal my identity use this deal for me so we have to be careful you know don't trust everything you see or every friend out there you know be careful with what you tell people uh consider the personal things you share on each platform got to be careful with that watch what you post everything you post could be could be permanent um it could be very difficult to get to get it unposted if if you will some sites we can we could probably reach out to them and see if they can't take that information off their site but no guarantee so we we have to be careful with what we put out there because it could become permanent disable gps tags and photos you post we go out someplace and we are done i'm out of the grand canyon and i'm taking uh pictures of the grand canyon and posting them to social media right away little gps tags basically location date and time you know where you're where you're at and if somebody's able to figure this out they go online they're able to find that gps tag and figure it out oh look at this george is currently out at the grand canyon uh he just posted these photos and guess what six months uh earlier i found out where george lives maybe i'll pay him a visit while he's while he's on his vacation so we we can disable those gps tags again different devices they're probably going to be different ways to do it check with the with the if you want to do it with your device check with where you bought it from where you got it from or with the company it came from to see how you can do that saying say think twice before downloading extras these extras that we then i i kind of talked about this a little bit back with the uh with the phishing emails but um the these uh you know quizzes that we can download you know these surveys that we can download and take you know download our survey and get a a 50 uh gift certificate to your favorite restaurant um you know third-party apps that we can download onto our devices experts say that more than one-third of these have malicious software attached to them so as we're downloading that friendly cert that friendly quiz that third party app or that friendly survey back during the election i remember i get of uh not not emails but text messages because that you know they're not just emails but they're using text messages now to get information and and i had i had a number of these of these uh surveys you know who do you think should win you know in in this race and uh you know yes or no i deleted everyone we we we want to be careful well you know if i don't know where it came from i'm not i'm not i'm not answering and i'm not doing anything with it we have to be careful because again what could happen so be again be careful with that as as i said over more than one-third will have malicious software attached to it and now i'm downloading it to my device without knowing allowing somebody to be able to go in anytime they want to to steal information keep personal information personal limit who can see your social media pages put those those blocking devices up now certain people have access to certain places monitor virtual presence google yourself using different data combinations see what is out there about you if you're uncomfortable investigate it if you can find it criminals can do mobile devices more than 65 percent of americans own a smartphone these things are computing devices just like everything else we have laptops tablets these things are computing devices these new phones we have to treat them as such we need to keep them locked again just like other our other devices with the where you neither need a pin or a password to get in to get into that device you know we have our phone we we lay it someplace for a couple minutes we forget about it somebody comes along and takes it we don't we don't have a you know a password link to it or or or a pin they're able to go in and take what they want so we need to be able to lock these devices with a pin or a password keep them updated again just like our other computing devices we need to keep them all keep them updated as as things get old as i as i mentioned earlier they get easier to penetrate so we want to we want to watch out for that as well never text personal information uh consider what you keep and if we do keep it back it up back it up to the cloud or to another device be careful with applications we already talked about that third-party applications uh again over more than one-third of them have have malicious software to you know if we want to we want to download a quiz a survey we want to download an application let's let's do our due diligence should look it look into the company before we do it make sure it is a it it is legit and if we can't we can't determine whether it's legit or not better better safe than sorry as the old saying goes but if we determine it's a legit site then we can certainly trust to download what what they have like like the application that the the app that we can download using unsecured wi-fi enable secure or encrypted connections as i said uh i more and more sites i'm going to it's automatically we automatically see that s for secure meaning everything that's being exchanged now is is secure um if if we don't see it so some sites are a lot of sites now somewhere on the website you know we're out at our favorite uh wi-fi hotspot where the security is little to to to non-existent and you know we can if if it's not automatically secure we could uh maybe somewhere on that page we could find where we can make that secure so that everything that we do everything we can exchange is is being exchanged securely we don't have to worry about somebody taking it uh there's also vpns that we can download virtual private networks that we can download to our computing devices and use and we enable those and it innate makes everything that we exchange with any site secure now with those there is a cost there's a number of companies out there we we if we're looking at doing that especially if we use you know these wi-fi hot spots a lot look into it check which one is is good for you there's there i think there's a cost associated with at least most of them if not not all of them but it's not not a big cost but it's another way that we can make sure what we're doing out in these in these places secure wipe your device before getting a new one um no matter how much deleting we do no much how much emptying of trash cans i don't even know if they they have that anymore or or how much browsing history we eliminate uh i hear that on on computing devices that all this information is still you know compressed and stored someplace on those devices and the right person would know where to go to retrieve that so we're maybe we're exchanging our device for another one before we do it we have them wipe that device clean so nobody can go in and find this information and use it it's going it's really gone commonwealth of pennsylvania cyber security re resource uh by the way notice https for secure but this is a website that you can go through it's created by the commonwealth on on cyber security a lot of good information on this site a lot of information that we've we've talked about or i have discussed in the presentation there may be additional information on their free to use so i'm going to pause at this point for a minute or two let anybody who would like to to copy down that web address copy it down and with that we're going to going to move on to our added bonus for this presentation i was asked to do a a a short presentation on a popular scam out there very popular in the commonwealth of pennsylvania romance scams five states in in the country uh including the commonwealth of pennsylvania this is the largest money-making scam out there and whether it's us or somebody we we know that we need to keep an eye out for we have to beware we have to be aware cyber criminals are going to you know people who are looking for romance and they know they're looking for romance and and and will do anything for the romantic partner and they take advantage of that so we're going to talk about what s a romance scam the red flags we need to watch out for and what to do if you become a victim so a romance scam happens when the criminal creates a priority my apologies creates a phony online presence to convince victims that they are in a close romantic relationship and ultimately separate them from their hard-earned money which is the whole the whole point the whole reason for doing it obviously dating platforms are our perfect place to meet new people and they're all looking for a relationship the criminal will seem to check all the boxes for the victim's liking you know if they're looking from for someone who's genuine and caring that's how they're going to appear they're looking for somebody who likes long walks you know along the seashore a romantic a glass of wine while watching the sunset they're going to appear to have the same thing i i kind of equate it i've worked for the commonwealth now for 15 15 and a half years before coming to work for the commonwealth i worked in sales and marketing i worked in sales and there's a sales technique that i was aware of i never i never used but i was aware of called mirroring where you mirror the customer that you're looking to sell to you know if they if they talk low with a whispery voice you lower your your voice to a low whispery voice if they use their hands a lot you're using your hands a lot if they you know they're if uh you know uh him and his wife love love to golf oh me and my wife love to golf too and you talk about golf it's all about appearing to be the same as the person you're looking to sell to because if they if they if they if they think you're like them people tend to buy from people that they that they feel are like them they trust them more it's a trusting thing and and well that that carries over to the scamming world as well and this is one way where it carries over where you appear to be what they're looking for because you want to be their perfect match and that's part of of the whole ruse if you will uh you may move from the online platform to a more direct contact such as texting or maybe even actual calls emailing and then the sudden financial crisis that only you can help with they they do this again time is money for them because this is what it's about either getting money from you or in some cases is getting information getting getting you stealing your identity to get to to get money from you but it's all about getting that money from you as quickly as possible you know separating you so the the romance happens quick you ex make a few exchanges and they're madly in love with you and and you're the person they want to be with you have that romantic you have that emotional connection now and now and then and then it's time to hit you up with that sudden financial crisis that only you can help them help them with uh you know my mother just went into the hospital we don't have the funds we we don't have enough money for her to to have this operation you know as my new romantic partner can can you loan me a thousand dollars that's all i need to help her out and and so on and so forth that's just one scenario and there's a number of others again the conversation almost almost completely online and it moves very quickly because again the time is money to them it's it's not it's not about romance it's about separating you from your cash from your money as quickly as possible there may be a local connection again that that that that that connection that we have maybe maybe i i say i'm i'm i'm i am local but i had to move away because here's a red flag uh one of the red flags is that they're never right down the street or in the next town or even in the next two towns where you could go meet them someplace mutual uh to have a cup of coffee to me get to know each other see if this is a good connection for both of you they're always either in in another state or maybe they're they're they're working or traveling overseas this is popular right now where you know maybe i'm i'm working the uh the gimmick is that i'm working as a government contractor and i'm over in overseas or maybe i'm doing volunteer work with maybe maybe a habitat for humanity and i'm in uganda helping to build houses and in in villages you know where's the tugs at the oh how is how how sweet they're they're doing this great volunteer work you know maybe i'm in the military they come up with something as to as to why they're not local why they can't meet you look but they still might have that local connection maybe they you know they've been to your area they're originally from the area so on and so forth again for that connection but they're but they're but now they're not now they're not they're they're in another state they're in another country for whatever reason their story is quite believable well they they they become they become experts at this i tend to think that scammers specialize in different things and and i think you have uh scammers that will specialize in the romance scams and and they come up with these great stories that are very believable that tug at the heartstrings and and of course again the end result is to separate you from from your cash in as much cash as they can separate you from romance scams you meet online instant uh instant deep love right they did after a few exchanges they're madly in love with you you're the person they want to be with and then they get you committed emotionally and then the sudden emergency and and and they need the money immediately oh my god can you wire me the money or can you go get a gift card and read the number off the back of the gift card i can get the funds that way and that's what it's about to get that cash as quickly as possible you know before we we have time to think before we change our minds so on and so forth so protect yourself search uh search your new loves picture there's several ways that we can you know you get a photo from somebody there's several ways we can tell what this is an actual authentic picture or not um i have information on that if if anybody would like that information certainly reach out to john john can get a hold of me and i can send that information uh google does a a thing on their website with a reverse image search where you can search these images and and and they and maybe find out it's just some stock photo someplace that somebody somebody used and it's been used you know several different places for several different things and and guarantee that it's a it's a made-up you know that the person that you're talking to is all made up you know check their story before before you get too deep into this new relationship you know can we can we do a back search oh okay you see oh wow that's great you're you're doing volunteer work in you in uganda for habitat with you humanity and and uh and and you're doing this and the other thing maybe we can check with contact habitat with humanity or wherever the story leads us to to to confirm the story is real or not most importantly meet in person eat in real life and if they can't do it oh i'm sorry i'm overseas for the next six months well you know what hey when you're back in the states and you're back in the area reach out to me and we can get together at a nice safe place of course you know for me especially and we can we can meet and have a cup of coffee have lunch or whatever and and then we can discuss a relationship because again they don't want to meet in in in in real life big red flag big and of course they can't because they're they're in another state they're overseas but you're the person that they want to be with they're the you're the person they're madly in love with don't share compromising pictures i think we know where where that's going you know can they can they use that to to extort money out of uh out of us we send them cut you know uh compromising uh pictures of of ourselves and and most of all do not send money do not send money even uh god how many people get into you know so-called legitimate relationships they need somebody online they meet in person they go out there they're together and next thing you know the their so-called love interest is hitting them up money for this that the other thing but especially with somebody we haven't met we haven't met in person we've only been online do not send money can be very difficult to get that money back uh and if we do there's some steps we can take may not help so again you know be careful i i do a presentation called avoiding scams and id theft and in that presentation i i talk about at some point i talk about how you know once we hand that money over i mean it's you know like with the debit card once that money gets handed over it could be gone forever it could be very difficult especially if this person is in another country we can't do we can't bring them over here and and get them thrown in jail for scamming people so we we have to be very careful but if it happens stop the loss stop the loss oh my god i sent this person a thousand dollars okay maybe at that point we looked at the the glass being half full and at least i didn't send them ten thousand dollars or you know or without keep sending them a thousand dollars until they've gotten ten thousand dollars or more out of us it was only a thousand dollars lesson learned i'll never do that again we want to report it just in case we can because who knows again just like with identity theft a lot of times it's it's close at home somebody that we know um maybe this is the maybe there's this is the same thing we certainly want to report it to the authorities report it to the local police maybe even the state police you know reporting it to law enforcement check your credit who knows what we we could have given them in those exchanges check our credit do a credit check your credit report to make sure everything's in order and if it's not we have to do a credit freeze and then and then start uh to to follow up on that and and get our finances back in order keep a notebook and don't be embarrassed above all don't be embarrassed i can't believe i let this happen to me i'm such an idiot now some of the smartest sharpest people out there have been and will be scammed uh we would just keep our guard up and if it does happen a again lesson lesson learned and hopefully we're not taken for much if it does happen here's some contact information for local uh for law enforcement resources local law local police department locator at police locator dot com slash pa pennsylvania's state police pa attorney general i'm going to have a little bit more information on the pennsylvania attorney general's office and the federal trade commission uh i'll give everybody a chance to copy down the police contact information and then we'll move on to the next slide okay state resources pennsylvania department of banking and securities our agency regulates those industries in pennsylvania if anyone ever has a question a problem and issue a complaint they can reach out to us say i'm having an issue with my local bank that's not getting resolved i need to have it resolved you can reach out to us maybe i was scammed i i cyber criminal got me i don't know what to do i forgot what that dillman guy told me eight months ago if you remember anything write down our our number you can reach out to us we can help you we can start start the process we can point you in the right direction um our toll-free number 800 pa banks or 722-2657 you can also reach us through our website at dobbs.pa.gov if you phone us we have an in-house customer service staff that will take phone calls monday through friday during normal business hours eight to five if you call during those days and times you should get a live voice answering the phone if you don't get a live voice answering the phone you leave a message and somebody should get back to you within 24 business hours i stress business hours because if you if you call after six o'clock on a friday evening don't expect to get a call back until sometime after eight o'clock monday morning pennsylvania attorney general's office we talked about them with cyber security uh coup uh certainly reach out to the to the pennsylvania attorney general's office to report uh you know identity theft uh so on and so forth 800 and there's a lot of information on their website a lot of good information we have a lot of good information on our website as well in reference to what i like to call saving investing and protecting what you save and invest same thing with the pennsylvania attorney general's website um again toll-free number one two five five five if if again my identity is stolen i need to i need to start the process to clear it up i need to reach out to somebody that's one entity we can reach out to them and the federal trade commission one that gives legitimacy to the fact that somebody else did this to me i didn't do it but but also um you know we and that's why we contact local law enforcement too we contact local law enforcement to report it and one one of the reasons is to give legitimacy to the fact that somebody else did this i didn't do it um because let's face it if i if i uh ruined my own credit i wanted to blame somebody else the last place i'm going to call is local law enforcement so we do that we get a copy uh we uh of the of the report that local law enforcement will create so we can and if anybody needs to see that to show you know this isn't on us this is on somebody else we reach out to the pennsylvania attorney general's office and the federal trade commission because again it gives legitimacy but also maybe this isn't local maybe this is part of a larger ring and we may be able to give them information they can use for their for their investigation they may be able to give us information we can use for our local investigation but also we make we're helping them out if you go to their websites both their websites they have a lot of information on on scamming identity theft cyber uh security we maybe uh give be giving them information that they can post on that they can use on their website to inform other consumers in in the commonwealth maybe this is a new scam that's out there and that we're not aware of the new cyber scam and we report it and they post it and and and maybe a few other people have done it they've reported it now hey here's this new scam we have to be aware of so on and so forth now with the federal trade commission i'll get to their contact information shortly ftc.gov or identity theft.gov we can link to identitytheft.gov or we can go directly to identitytheft.gov which is overseen by the ftc and there's a whole walk-through process that we can do with them reporting identity theft it's a whole check off section uh what we need to do how we need to do it uh who we need to to contact how we need to contact them if we need to write a letter they'll tell us the need to we'll need to write a letter they give us sample letters that we can use it's a great walkthrough process and you create a report that way that you can print out and you want to keep out a printout to keep just in case you need to show it to somebody to prove that hey i didn't do this somebody else did here's my official report from the ftc from identity theft.gov so on and so forth we want to keep notes of everything too that takes place in case we need to refer back to them pennsylvania department of state as another site has a lot of good information on it there's their toll-free number 800-822-2113 or dos.pa.gov federal resources we talked about the federal trade commission 877-987 ftc.gov there's the full uh address but i think just ftc.gov gets us to the website and again if we're looking to report identity theft we can link to identity theft.gov which is overseen by the ftc or go directly to identitytheft.gov and finally us postal inspection service um we we need to be on the lookout there's a lot of uh in the there's this thing called dumpster diving we have to be careful with dumpster divers people stealing information and it's highly recommended that we shred this information likewise with mailboxes there's the mailbox version of dumpster diving people rifling through mailboxes looking for information they can steal you know those pre-approved credit card applications that uh some of us are a lot of us get and we we crumble it up and throw it away and somebody fishes it out of the garbage all they need to do is put in a new mailing address and they get a credit card in our name that they get to rack to the hill and not pay on of course and you know thank you very much so uh in in this case they fish the uh they they fish that to pre-approve credit card application out of our mailbox so if we suspect experts uh highly suggest that we can use utilize a locked mailbox we do that if but if we suspect mail theft it is a federal offense certainly reported to the u.s postal inspection service and there's their contact information as well i have questions and then my contact information anyone can feel free to reach out to me directly at my office number and of course you can reach out to us at dot through dobbs.pa.gov you