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hello welcome everyone i am dianne mizaki your state representative for the 47th district thank you so much for joining us by assuming by facebook live to talk about this critical topic of identity theft while we're letting everyone jump on in into the zoom call and to have some time to get in on facebook i do want to let you all know that if you have questions we do encourage you to type them in the q a feature on below on the zoom call or if you want to type them into the comments section on facebook and we do have people um monitoring them so we'll make sure that we can get them no matter which platform you are trying to use so we'll just give everybody a few minutes to start joining and then we will be good to go so again i just want to remind everybody please put any questions in the q a function and we will be monitoring that over the course of the presentation so just as a little bit of background for why i wanted to uh run this for everyone you know we're we're in an era where we do get so much in in terms of benefits from technology but unfortunately that has come with downsides as well so in illinois we know that cyber crime and cyber identity theft is up one of the largest sources of identity theft um that people have been hearing about recently in illinois has to do with the illinois department of unemployment security um my district office has probably gotten thousands of calls that um it involves everything that people are dealing with when it comes to um unemployment and finding fraud that's happening and associated with um those that on those unemployment claims and in fact um one of the reasons why this is a particularly uh pernicious problem is because more unemployment claims were filed between february and may of 2020 um than we've seen since the last major recession in 2009 to 2010. so you know the the fraud claims not only are people you know trying to get money that shouldn't be getting it but the people who actually do need it and and do deserve it um you know then sometimes their funds are actually either getting uh rerouted or getting put on hold now here in illinois our state unemployment agencies they have identified perhaps some corporate data breaches that have allowed for criminals to file for benefits using stolen identities there are other causes as well and what we do know is just about everyone in illinois has been touched by this or they know someone who has so um you know and we also know that you've been a lot of people have been experiencing frustration and that they're not getting clear information out of illinois department of employment security about what has happened with their identities what are the consequences of this fraud and a whole host of other things and um we're in the new start of a new legislative session so i've actually been working on legislation to try to do some things to help stop this which would include requiring ideas to use things that we see in the private sector such as two-factor authentication which will also hopefully help to cut down on some of the fraud we also know that recently the illinois attorney general's office did announce that they're going to try to team up with the fbi to tackle some of the uninsured spending unemployment insurance benefits fraud um and you know and it's so it really is a very serious and prevalent problem that's been causing issues for a whole host of innocent people here in illinois both employed and unemployed as well as for employers you know who are also trying to work through that mess now i'm sure the comptroller's office who's joining us tonight we'll go through this in in more depth but the illinois department of employment security which we abbreviate ides they recommend that anyone who has been notified of a fraudulent unemployment insurance claim that's been issued in their name please as soon as you can call 1-800-814-0513 i would also recommend that you reach out to our office my number is 630-852-8 or you can email us directly at mizaki m-a-z-z o-c-h-i at i-l-house gop dot org and then that way we can try to help you particularly you find out that you're not getting any type of response from ides um so ides has indicated um recently they believe they've stopped about 350 000 fraudulent claims but we know that hundreds of thousands more have happened and keep happening so we really do encourage all of our district residents to try to be vigilant and report those fraud claims as soon as they um encounter them so again i just want to give a friendly reminder please send in your questions again you can post them in the comment post on facebook or you can put them in the q a section below and we are going to try to get to all of your questions when we get to the end of the presentation so for now i would like to turn the floor over to samantha alonso who is the program manager of the department of constituent affairs with the illinois comptroller's office she's going to discuss with you tonight how to identify scams how to protect your information and also some of the state resources that are available if you do find yourself the victim of identity theft so thank you samantha in the controller's office comptroller's office for this presentation for our district residence and the floor is over to you sorry hello i'm so happy to be here today i will be sharing my screen in a moment um but yes uh like was mentioned earlier identity theft is a very big issue here in the state of illinois and i'm really happy that i have opportunity here to explain the different resources that are available the different ways to um to identify identity theft if you've been a victim of it if you have not been a victim of it and what to do if you actually are a victim of identity theft and how to prevent it in the long run so i will show share my screen right now okay can you see it i can see it if you can okay hopefully everyone else can if anyone can't see it please uh let us know um in the q a and if for whatever reason um maybe you're only seeing a portion of the screen share do go into your view options on zoom and click on fit to window and hopefully that will help yes so this presentation is called smart consumers we have a program called smart consumers here in the state office and we are focusing on coven 19 scams the different scams that are very popular right now with coven 19 and how to prevent that so before i start i want to explain some of the programs that we have here in the state office of the comptroller we recently just had this program called bank on illinois if you like to have any presentations here please contact our office i will have our contact information at the end of the presentation but bank on is this new program that we have here in the state office of comptroller where we help under bank or unbanked communities get resources to have a safe and secure bank account so we have that that program here at the office we also have smart consumers which talks about identity theft how to prevent it and how to identify it finance 101 how to manage your finances and also next steps program which it talks about mostly for high school students how to manage your finances as you are getting ready for those steps to go into college and we also have a program called smart business illinois program and that program talks about what we do in that program that we help small minority business owners get contracts with the state of illinois and those are people who are considered minority as an ethnicity and also people who are women-owned businesses who are veteran-owned businesses and people with disability-owned businesses so if you do have your own small business here in the state of illinois please contact our office and we can actually help you with our smart business program it's completely free and we'll guide you through the steps to get a contract here at the state of illinois okay so about identity theft that's a very big issue here in the state of illinois and also all over the nation every year has been the numbers have been growing and growing and the issue why we have so many people who are a victim of identity thefts is because and actually so many people who have who have not reported it or people who have not fixed the issue of identity theft because it's because people are not really they're not aware about how to combat it so we'll talk about how to combat it right now here in the state of illinois so some facts that we have for you here today is that we have 44 million dollars that have been stolen as of the past year due to identity theft one out of 15 americans have been identified as a victim of identity theft this is a very common issue that we have here and then we also have one out of five americans who have found reports or errors in their credit report and only 79 of them were able to amend them and like i said earlier people who are unable to amend them is because they don't know how to identify so we'll talk about that later in the presentation and six over sixty thousand percent of them have reported they were victim identity theft since january of 2020. so what is identity theft identity theft is when someone uses unlawfully uses your name and or social security number and or credit card number or bank account number um without of course your without your um approval so they'll look for that kind of information and they'll use that for their own gain to for a financial gain basically so whenever you come into contact with somebody who calls your phone number who emails you and they ask you for your information it's always very important that you always ask these questions one is why is my number needed how will my number be used what will happen if i refuse to give my information and can i provide you with just the last four digits in regards to social security number it's very important that you can to give whoever is on the line the very least amount of information as possible and also it's very important that you keep your social security number safe you should not be giving that out to people who you do not know people who are you're not sure that are authorized to get that information also so in regards to the 19 these are some of the most common scams we have available right now right now we have a lot of constituents who are reporting that they're getting many calls from their irs text messages or emails and first of all i just want to make this very clear the irs will never call text or email you if they ever have any important information that you have to be notified of they will send you a letter to your house they will not call you they will not text you and they will not email you so it's very important to not respond to any of these messages because they are scams also as of right now you do not need to pay for a covered vaccine your insurance will pay for that fully so if you have anybody contacting you saying that you owe money for a covered vac okla 19 vaccine that is also a sign that you are being scammed um emails from the center of disease control and prevention the world health organization the cdc and the who is very important that you do not interact with those emails because that also can be a scam and if you get any phone calls from the mysterious number who are claiming maybe the cdc or the who asking you to wire money or to give gift cards to people who you are not aware of that can also be a scam and also you do not need to pay a fee when you receive your stimulus check the government will not ask you to pay a fee so we talked a little bit about unemployment fraud earlier but i just want to show you some signs of unemployment fraud that we have here um with that specifically with the ides and if you receive any which is i think most common right now people are receiving a lot of debit cards from the ideas or employment insurance letters saying that they have enrolled to the ids program for unemployment if you have not enrolled in you're getting this information it's very important that you're very careful and you do not interact with it you do not call or or or register that card uh also if you notice anything in your state or federal tax offsets if you've been notified by your employer some employers will contact you and ask you if you are enrolling for unemployment um it's very important that you take that into great consideration and follow up with that to make sure that your identity is not being stolen and also if you are unable to apply for an apply for unemployment due to an existing account a lot of people right now in the state of illinois are trying to apply for unemployment but they're unable to because the website says they already have an existing account and that's something that you should take very cautious and take very seriously you should look into that more often um also if you are a victim of identity theft it's very important that you report the the fraudulent claim with the ides and the ftc ftc we will have that information available with you at the end of the presentation um also you should not activate your debit card if you are activating a debit card you are basically saying that you are unemployed and that's also part of a fraudulent scam it's very important that you do not activate it but instead you you report it immediately and overall whenever you have we'll talk about this throughout the presentation if you ever are worried that you might be a victim of identity theft you should always always always check your script your credit score for anything that may look suspicious and we'll talk about what suspicious is later on the presentation so identity theft in children usually within identity theft we think of adults or senior citizens being victims of identity theft however children in the united states are large victims of identity that because no one ever expects children to be victims everyone expects senior citizens or doll to be victims no one ever thinks that a baby or or a toddler could be a victim of identity but it is very common as a 2020 it's been reported that 39 of children have had their identity stolen and 60 percent of them were stolen by friends or family and that is a very common issue that we have here in the country um i've known in my experience there has been one constituent that i met earlier on they told me that their sister took their took their identity when they were younger she wanted to buy a car and she didn't follow up with those payments and the constituent didn't know that his identity was being stolen by a family member until he got older was applying for a loan he found out he had really bad credit so it's very important that you know as a parent or as a guardian that you try to safe keep your child's information their their birth certificate their social security number so that another family member or friend does not take that information and we'll also show you how to do a credit freeze and the fraud alert um usually recommend a credit freeze for children or for senior citizens mostly for people who are not going to be you know pulling out a loan or any kind of credit anytime soon but we'll talk more about what is a a credit freeze and what are the requirements to have a credit freeze later in the presentation so irs scams another um like i mentioned earlier the irs will not email you they will not call you if you do get an email please do not reply to it and do not click on any links instead you can forward it to phishing at irs.gov the link is right here in the presentation if you click on these or reply on these you're putting yourself at risk of giving whoever is sending those emails of your information or you can even give yourself a virus as well so it's very important that you do not interact with any irs emails um for the phones i recommend that you know obviously honestly i recommend if you get any phone calls that you do not recognize so just do not answer it if it is something important if it's something related to medical or work for the most part if it's important they will leave you a voice message or now a text message but um do not answer any phone calls that you do not recognize um but if you do and it's you know someone that's irs or it could be somebody who is maybe from your cable company or whoever it's v ry important to ask for their callback number and employee employee badge number if it's a legitimate company most likely they will give you that kind of information um and you can also contact the irs and report the incident to the ftc and i'll have the information available for you at the end of the presentation so these are some examples from the irs in regards to phishing on emails so as you can see the picture on the left is a email that a person might get actually both pictures both pictures are an email that someone might get from the irs and as you can tell the pic the email looks actually very real it actually has says internal revenue service united states department of treasury it looks like a legitimate email however as you can see in this email the irs or in this case the scammer is asking the person for their social security number their credit card number and all this really personal information this right here is a sign that you know it is a scam they're asking for personal information they're not and right here when you give your credit card number your personal information social security number this is how a person can be a victim of identity theft they're exposing their cells to a potential scam so it's very important that you do not click this and do not give this link any your personal information so online shopping right now that we're all at home and a lot of stores are closed and people are being cautious and social distancing a lot of people are doing their online shopping from home and this is great you know you're trying to be safe however it's very important that you're also safe when you're online doing the shopping it's very important that you use safe links and that you make sure that you are buying things on a safe website um we recommend that you do not save your credit card information to your profile if your computer ever gets hacked your credit card will not be saved on there so it's very important that you do not take your credit card i know it's tedious you might have to type in your credit card information every time you go to amazon or macy's but on in the long run you will be happy that you're not your credit card information is not going to be stolen also recommend that you do pay with your credit card it has better guarantees under federal law and that you use secure sites um look for the padlock we have a picture right here you can look for the padlock and um whenever you make go to any kind of website that means that you know secure website and also when you type in the link we recommend that you type in https the s me stands for security so you want to make sure you have the https and then whatever website that you're going to go on um also when you're shopping online it's very important that you are on a secure internet site or a secure internet account so when you're going to be purchasing money putting your credit card information somewhere you want to go on a secure wi-fi network that you know somebody else might not be hacking so for instance if you're somewhere public like a mcdonald's or starbucks and you're putting your personal information your credit card or your social security number somebody who is under that same wi-fi can actually hack it and actually see what you're seeing on your screen so it's very important that when you're using confidential information that you're in a secure wi-fi insecure meaning it could be a personal one it has to be a wi-fi account that you know there's a very limited amount of people that are using it at the time and mostly requires a password not a public account so here are some very big scams that have been very popular for many years right now of course we have imposter scams so this can be irs and pastors this can be cable company pastors this can be phone company pastors so i know constituents have told me in the past that they received calls from their phone company before and the phone company will call or text them and tell them hey you haven't been paying your phone bill if you don't pay it right now you're gonna get cut off and the person was scared honestly who wouldn't be scared because we all need to use our phone for work or for our daily lives and of course the person gave them their information their credit card information and that person got scammed so in case you ever made when we're in a situation where you think you might be approached by an imposter of course it's very important that you ask those four important questions um do i need to give him information i can give my last four digits my social security number and it's also very important that if you think they might be an imposter to just hang up and call whoever it is that you're trying to get in contact with for instance if it's a phone company that you're being approached by hang up and call your actual phone company and ask them am i short on my bill did i you receive my payment and they will tell you if it's legitimate or not you need to be very careful who you give your your credit card your debit card information to over the phone because you you never know if they are an imposter or not another form of scam are fake charities so fake charities we all see all these like sad cases online with people who are hurting right now cloven 19 families who are in desperate need and communities are desperate new so many food drives that are going on right now and it's very important that whenever you want to give charities which is a very kind thing to do we recommend that you do your research you do your research and either call the organization and see if that's the right information that you need to send your money to um and make sure that or even call your community representative or um you can call our office too and we can help you figure out if whatever charity you're trying to contact is the correct one it's very important that you are very careful with your information for instance i know there was a marlene ochoa case in chicago i believe was two years ago which i don't know if anybody heard about it it was a really sad situation where this pregnant girl was murdered and the person who murdered her took her baby and it was a very very sad situation and the family created a gofundme page for the daughter and for the baby but the situation was that because this was a very big popular situation in chicago a very sad story there was like multiple gofundme pages and all of them were scams except for the one that the family made and so many people were donated they really wanted to help the family they had such a sad story and thousands of dollars went to impostors and scammers because people um are out there trying to create these fake charities so it's very important that you do your research and make sure that you're you're giving to the right organization the right cause also another form of a scam are the lotteries and this is very common it's been going on for many years where people call you and they tell you that you want a trip to hawaii or you want a trip to somewhere beautiful and amazing or you want a lot of money as well but if you do not if you did not apply for this kind of lottery or this kind of um this kind of trip it's very important that you do not follow it you do not interact with it a lot of times if you call the lot if the someone calls you and they say that you won money with the lottery and you did not apply for a lottery or by liar lottery ticket they'll ask you for your credit card information just for security measures and so on and so forth that's how they get you so they have to be very careful when you interact with anybody who say that you won something that you've never applied for also another form of scam are the cries for help and this is most common with immigrant families or families who have another member or a friend of a family that's out of town or out of country and basically what happens here is that an impostor will call you for instance and say that your family member that's in in spain right now is hurt and they need money and they're in the hospital and a lot of times a lot of people get scared because they think oh my gosh my child's in spain how do i contact them how do i give them the help that they need am i answering the phone and they'll actually follow through with the cries of help those imposters will look for your most vulnerable spots and they'll try to get you through that so it's very important that if somebody ever calls you and tells you that a child might be in jail or that they're hurt in another part of the world that you try to figure out with the child or whoever's with the child if that's true if that's legitimate um also another form of scams are the online sweethearts those are also known as catfish i don't know if anybody seen the show catfish but catfishes and online sweethearts those are basically when a person thinks um for instance someone may think that they're talking to a a 20 year old girl but really it's like someone who is not her it's like an older person or someone who looks totally not like the picture and basically the online sweetheart will scam the person and they'll they'll ask for money they'll ask for trips and things and so on and so forth and they'll try to like talk to the person and try to get their money out of them and it's very important when you're meeting people online that you're very careful with them you try to at least do face time like how we are doing right now try to see their faces and their voices and see if they're legitimate and overall just be very careful who you give information to and make sure that you're not giving it to someone who you think you're you're talking who who's not someone you don't think it's you're talking to okay so just a reminder when you're um to be aware of us get to be aware of scams you have to be aware when you're shopping online using social media when you're on social media do not be i know a lot of young people they show their driver's license when they get their driver's license and it's very important that you don't show that personal information those drivers license have your date of birth on it has your driver's id number on it do not share your information people who are getting the covered vaccines right now they're showing their cold vaccine cards and that also has personal information you cannot be showing any kind of information social media that may be that may hurt you in the long run also do your research before shopping online or donating to a charity i highly recommend that you're shopping online to use um companies and businesses that you know are very are secure that are secure and are not something some small business that you heard on the side this course is great to help small businesses but make sure you're going to a legitimate business when you're shopping online also do not answer calls you do not recognize if it is important they will leave you a voicemail do not open strange emails and do not click on any phishing emails if you open a strange email it's very important that you do not click on it don't click on information because you might be clicking on a link that enables the scammer to get into your computer or you can get a virus on your computer so it's very important when you get in contact with any of that kind of um situations also overall we recommend that constituents do use their gut when they come into these kind of situations if it is too good to be true it most likely is and that's something we have to keep telling ourselves and keep reminding ourselves if it's too good to be true it probably is so if you have been a victim if of identity theft or you think you may have been a victim of identity theft we're going to talk about some ways to combat it so fraud protection which is a fraud alert is something that is free it is good for one year and can be extended and what it does is that it warns creditors to verify your identity before using your credit so this can be recommended for people who have lost their information or their or their information has been stolen and this is basically like a temporary one-year kind of protection and it can always be extended as well and basically what to do with rock protection you have to contact one of the three credit agencies and we'll have all the information at the end of the presentation now credit freeze is a more of a long-term kind of like credit protection we have mostly recommend this for senior citizens and for children people who are not planning anytime soon pulling extra lines of credit and basically it just freezes your credit it does not prevent you from it does not freeze your current line to credit you know you can still use your credit cards your loans are still going to be great but it will just prevent you from pulling out another loan or another credit card so will not affect any kind of credit you have right now at the moment um so basically this uh alerts creditors to potential fraud it's indefinite unless you cancel of course this is free free for everyone you can do this online over the phone or through written letters and it will not affect your access to credit cards or credit score so for this you only to have a credit to increase the freezer credit you'll have to contact all three of the credit bureaus and we'll also have the information for you at the end of the presentation and of course when in doubt check your bank account information frequently check you can check out your phone now you can check it online if you notice as there's any payments that are suspicious or payments that you don't think that you've done is very important that you contact your bank and they will help you through that situation a lot of times a lot of scammers will take if they do have your bank information your credit card information they'll start out taking one or two dollars at the most and then when they notice that you're not paying attention when they notice that their the credit card is still valid they'll start taking more and more and more so if you notice that you know they made a couple of dollars that are a little weird your credit card your debit card information it's very important that you look into that because at first it starts out it's very little but then later on it could be like five hundred dollars that it's missing from your bank account so it's very important that you check that bank account frequently also check your credit report check your credit report and see if there's any lines of credit that were pulled that you did not do i would recommend that you do it for children and also for senior citizens i know a lot of um organizations and corporations allow you to do one credit report for free we recommend the a year so we recommend that you do at least one credit report a year and also research before you make any kind of donation make sure you're putting information at the right places so our advice to seniors is be careful he gave your power to return you to make sure you give it to someone that you trust and is very responsible with your information record doctor's appointments record whenever you go to the doctor especially with covered vaccine with the covet vaccine that you have right now make sure you record when you went to the dentist when you went to the doctor because a lot of times scammers not only will they take your information but they'll also try to use your medical benefits for themselves too so it's very important that you record all of that information and do not give your personal information to strangers um if you feel like someone may not be maybe a stranger or an imposter or a scammer it's very important that you just take a step back real life analyze what's going on and if you have to hang up on the phone hang up on the phone or you can always call the company or call whoever the actual corporation is instead of dealing with the person who's on the phone with you as a member you always remind yourself that if it's too good to be true it most likely is and talk to your families and friends when you're in doubt whenever you come into some kind of imposter situation or scams it's very important that you share your experience with other people so that they can also prevent that from happening to themselves an they can even offer you some advice as well it's very important that in order for us to combat identity theft and scams that we talk to the people around us so that your friends and family can also be can secure themselves with that information so frequently asked questions that we have is that how can i identify a scammer we talked about that earlier you know if someone's calling you if the irs or someone's calling you're not sure if they're um a a legitimate company they're asking for your personal information they're asking you for your social security number they're asking for all this information and you're you're not sure if it's legit always ask those four questions that we should that we have in the beginning of the presentation can i give you my last four digits why are you asking me for this kind of information and can i just confirm the information with you for a legitimate company they will work with you um another question that we have is that how can i check my credit report you can check your credit report by contacting one of the three credit bureaus that we have we'll i'll have that present that information with you and then the presentation and i believe they do have a free credit report there where you can check your credit and what do i do if i keep getting scam phone calls on many of the phones you are able to block the scam phone calls um you can just hang up and just in your phone you can identify where you can block block that number however overall i recommend that if you get any phone calls you do not recognize so just do not answer it it's always safe safest to not answer it and if it's important they will always leave you a message or a text message and what do i do if i get scammed if you do get scammed we recommend that you do a fraud alert or you can also do a credit freeze again the fraud alert both of them are free the fraud alert is good for one year and basically you'll have the credit bureaus um checking your information and if somebody if they see anything that may be suspicious they will contact you and ask you if that's legitimate or not the credit freeze however is good indefinitely unless you cancel and of course if you want to cancel it's also free and for the credit freeze you'll have to contact all three of the credit bureaus and if you want to cancel the credit freeze you still have to contact all three of them since it's a more indefinite and the longer kind of program to apply for so here are three credit bureaus we have experian transunion and equifax we have their phone numbers here and their websites as well where you can apply for the credit freeze or fraud alert again the fraud alert is good for one year and you have to contact only one of the three credit bureaus they will contact once you contact one of them they will contact the other two to let them know that you are applying for a fraud alert for a credit freeze you have to contact um all three of them because it is more indefinite and of course this is free you don't have to pay extra fees for them and if you want to keep continuing with the with the with the fraud alert you can always reapply after a year to report a scam you can report either with the office of the attorney general we have their identity theft hotline here and their online website and we also have the federal trade commission they have an online application here that you can apply to and report any kind of scams that you have and you can also if you've been a victim of um unemployment scams people you get calls or kind of email saying that you're applying for unemployment and you're really not is we highly recommend that you fill out the application here with the ides or you can also contact them in this hotline that we have here in the presentation okay i leave a pop quiz here if you're on facebook we highly recommend that you put it in and in the comments you can put it in the comments or you can put it here in the presentation but basically to see if you've been um been paying attention so please mark your answers in the comment box if you're here so let's see if you've been paid attention what form do scams appear in we have a phone calls b email c social media or all of the above and of course scams come in many methods and they do include phone calls email and social media it's very important that you do not answer any phone calls you do not recognize it's important that you not click on any emails that you do not recognize and also be careful when you post on social media so the answer is d so what is fraud alert fraud alert is a tool that manages um it could be a a tool that manages your finances sorry it could be a tool that sends alerts to creditors and lenders a tool that saves your password c or d a tool that protects you from viruses so fraud alert is a tool number b letter b that sends alerts to creditors and lenders so electric i'll alert the one of the three credit bureaus if you have any situations if there's any fraud that could be identified in your accounts it will go directly to your to the creditors and they'll cut and the creditors will contact you if there's any if they detect any kind of fraud into your account if anybody tries to create a open a credit card in your account if anybody tries to steal your information or use the social security numbers the credit bureaus will contact you and they'll be notified and that's what the fraud alert is all right okay i see some questions i'm gonna answer it after we finish this little pop quiz um all right so who do who do you contact to apply for the fraud alert so remember the fraud alert is the one year the one year program we have a experian b equal facts and treat a c transunion and d all of the above i click something sorry so the file alert just a reminder farther when you're playing for a friday you have to contact one of these three credit bureaus just one of them once you contact one so the answer is d here once you contact them they will contact the rest of them to to finish off the fraud alert application for you so what is a credit freeze credit freeze could be a identity theft game b federal department c a tool that protects your credit or d an informational class so it's a little bit easy the answer here is c it's totally protects your credit so similar to the fraud alert um the credit freeze will you the the credit bureaus will get notified if there's any kind of suspicious things going in your credit account like the file alert if somebody tries to pull another line of credit in your account so it does protect your credit and does try to identify any kind of weird scams that are going on in your account okay who do you call to apply for a credit freeze is it a experian or a equal facts b experian c transunion or d all of the above i think we did this one already samantha i think this is this is um the credit first it's a little different it's a little different so we have fraud alert and we have credit free so the credit phrase is the longer lasting one this is the one that lasts indefinitely unless um you want to cancel it and i do have a d here so i'm going to put d so i won't put c here in the box and the answer is of course d all of the above so because it's a longer lasting application a longer lasting program you do have to contact every single one of them to do the credit freeze and if you want to cancel you have to call all three of them again it's a little bit tedious but that's the kind of work that you have to do for a longer lasting program longer lasting protection so what do you do if you've been a victim of identity theft or a victim of a scam could you a call your bank b freeze your credit c sign up for a fraud alert or d all of the above i see a d here in the chat box so yes these all of the above these are all your options and what you should do call your bank if you need to get a new debit card or credit card number you should do that um you have the option to freeze your credit and you also have options do a fraud alert as well to protect yourself so the answer is d okay so i'm going to answer the questions that are here yeah so i think our first question was did ides automatically send out debit cards um even if there was not an application and i'm assuming even he means even if there was not an actual claim filed with ides yes so i believe for the ids the actual ideas you have to fill out an application they're not just going to give out debit cards to random people they have to have somebody um when you're applying for unemployment you have to fill out an application and then you also have to get interviewed and they have to have an investigation to see if the person who is applying for unemployment is actually unemployed so they will not give you debit cards for free i know it sounds nice to have free money but they're not going to give you debit cards um for no reason so if you do receive a debit card it is very important you contact the ideas and report that you have a credit uh a debit card that is not called that was not for that you didn't apply for right so steve i think that that's kind of directed to your point is that if you were to get in the mail i think a lot of people have gotten the debit cards from key bank and that sort of thing if you do get one of those and you know you did not apply for it you absolutely um not only want to let id yes no but you may also want to go through some of the steps that samantha identified in terms of you know checking your credit score doing some of the you know the freezes and that sort of thing be in the fraud alerts because that means that somebody has tried to do identity theft in your name to get that debit card and the same is going to apply as well so one of the uh smith just to follow up on that one of the things that i've gotten a lot of questions about in the district office is people will get things sent to their home address so maybe it's being sent to the correct address but it's either a previous resident or maybe someone who you know lives the next house over or it'll be you know a completely unknown name for someone who's applying what should someone do in that sort of scenario so i'm sorry can you rephrase the question the person is yeah so let's say so so for example say someone sends you say they get something that's you know got ides on it or it's one of the key bank cards and it was addressed to the correct numerical address so one two three south fifth street but the name is not my name it's not my spouse's name it's not a kid's name maybe it is the person who lived in the house before me or it will be a name that i don't know or maybe it'll be my next door neighbor's name but not my name what should someone do in that situation i would recommend contacting the ideas immediately letting them know that um someone's information or their card went to the wrong address um you might make that situation that process a little bit faster for whoever it was if it is the correct person um but i'll honestly if you get something that does not belong to you and it's in regards to the ids whether you applied for it or not or it is not you know mentioned towards you and is mentioned towards a stranger always contact ideas and report that i think one of our next questions was from adeline she said i get a lot of calls from for a car warranty and the caller says to press one to remove my name from the calling list should i do that i recommend that you do not you do not you should not do that because you don't not know if it's a legitimate company or a legitimate car warranty company and that's a very common kind of like one of those phone calls that you get those robo calls saying that you have car you need to call for a car warranty or so on and so forth do not press it because you don't know if by you pressing it you're gonna get scammed you don't know if you're gonna be authorizing them to get your information or anything like that do not click it and i recommend if you can't just block the number or do not answer any phone calls you do not recognize if it's really important they will always leave you a message you know and to follow up on that especially you know today everybody's got their smartphones and everyone's smartphone has a unique advertiser id number on it so one of the other things too is is that um you know for some phones if somebody doesn't necessarily know is this phone number associated with a particular address you know when when you press one that might make it easier for somebody to try to find you or to locate you or better pinpoint what zip code you live in or maybe even your address or what your advertiser id number is that they in turn can then you know link back to a name um and an address so you know to me the and i i mean i i just won't engage in telemarketers at all and you know even if they promise we'll take you off the list even when you know sometimes when you get unsubscribed lists um on email oh we just sent you an email and now unsubscribe sometimes the sheer act of you responding to that email can give them sufficient identifying information about you that could come back to haunt you later on so i i i think samantha's exactly right is you know ignore them as much as um you can and don't don't respond and certainly especially if it's an email um you don't want to get any you don't want to click on any link that's um that's in those emails because i can deposit cookies in your account and or on your computer and can be a vehicle for spyware yes um one of our other questions is is lifelock worth the money i'm sending them yearly um maybe we can just take a life lock out of it and talk about just some of these credit monitoring agencies in general samantha i don't know if you have the ability to answer that or not yeah so i'm not very familiar with lifelock or other companies but i do know what the with the credit freeze and the fraud with the three credit bureaus they're free they're completely free um if you want to test it out you can test it out definitely but it will not hurt to to have the fraud alert or the credit freeze as well i'm not familiar with other identity theft companies do but because they're a government agency we do highly recommend it and they're very large been going on for a long time and overall if you ever think that you may be a victim of identity theft if you're worried you notice that there's some strange payment to your debit card or you're getting um you're finding weird reports in your credit report you can always do a fraud alert you can always do a credit freeze um and they're always available for you and they're free yeah and i would say though you know i think some of the things that samantha identified a lot of it you know does require people to be proactive so i think if you're the type of person who perhaps is not going to be proactive in terms of you know checking your account or something like that that that could potentially be worth the money um if you are in a situation where maybe you know you're going to be traveling and not necessarily checking mail or um you know maybe you've got a community mailbox you know or so you know something where people might be able to gain access to some of your confidential information um in a way that's out of the ordinary you know it might be worth doing i actually have credit monitoring services because i'm an elected official and so much information is publicly known about me so for me just having that extra level of security gives me a bit of peace of mind whether it's genuinely worth the money you know i i can't predict but you know i think everybody's going to have a different level of risk tolerance um on things like that um samantha one question that we did get in um had to do with um you know when it comes to emails um you know in terms of one one technique i know that some people will use and this is kind of relevant to people in our district if you've ever tried to wire funds um people will send fraudulent wiring instructions say if you're trying to purchase a house or purchase a car or you know purchase something where banks want you to wire funds those should you know ideally never be sent through email or if they do you know with something with an independent uh password security similarly you wouldn't want to put your um don't don't ever put a credit card number in an unsecured email because again anybody who could then you know spoof your email traffic going in in one direction or another um it just you know that could be another way where um your identity and your you know your financial information could get compromised smith i don't know if you've ever seen them i'm sorry i think you're froze oh i'm sorry about that um you know i think when it comes to things like wire instructions and and putting financial information such as bank accounts credit card numbers in emails um that even even if you're only sending it to maybe one or two people um you don't know where they can forward it you don't know if their systems could potentially be getting scammed is that something that you've encountered and you know advice for people to deal with um that type of situation yes for wiring um i haven't um i'm not too familiar with um the wiring but i know we always recommend people that you know be very careful where you send your money from your information to um if you're getting calls in the middle of the night telling you that your family's hurt they need to wire money a lot of people they're telling elderly seniors to go to target and to wire your money through target or walmart um be very careful with that i i even heard an experience one time where an elderly woman told me that um somebody told her to go to to walmart or target to wire some kind of money to them because they're getting scammed and if they tell the woman in target or whoever it was that you know who they're speaking to they won't be able to help them so of course i can target a walmart specifically i think this was a target that the woman's talking about and target the the employees noticed that she was on the phone with somebody while she was doing the wiring and they asked her you know who is she talking to is everything okay and the woman was scared because she thought that you know she identifies who she's talking to they're not going to help her it was an elderly woman so of course you know all these corporations are they're being trained to help people with the organ coming victims of identity theft but you have to be careful who you're talking to um if you're talking to an organization they're telling you to wire money just hang up and call the organization ask them if that was legitimate email or not it's better to be safe than sorry and always follow your gut whenever you come into these kind of situations okay um all right yes we got another uh comment yeah so janice your experience that you just talked about here in the chat box is very similar to what a lot of people who have called into our office have talked about um they received the unemployment insurance finding letter they call ides and um it'll be either a false name or a false claim you know you might not have even worked for the employer who's listed there um and it sounds like you know janice you did the right thing in the sense of notifying the ftc filing the police report notifying ibes um you know you received the debit card but um didn't use it at least somebody there didn't try to um you know break into your mailbox um and but then you know a few days later get another letter saying ides needed more information um yeah they said the deadline to reply was january 25th and you received the letter on january 27th um yeah welcome to government um so you know but yeah you said you notified your bank and put a fraud alert with them notified the credit card company in the ftc you know that that certainly sounds like everything um you should have done samantha i don't know if you have any additional advice on additional steps um that someone could take in that situation just to try to protect themselves yes i will still contact the ides um you know you might have it on record that you are applying for unemployment and you know god forbid if you ever do need an employment you might not be qualified or you might not be able to make an account because someone's already using your personal information so i do recommend the contact ides so that you do not have any kind of record of the unemployment um and you always have and if you've got everybody need to have apply for unemployment you will be able to yeah i know samantha again so one of the things that um people in the district have been finding is when they report this into ides they send it in and then they get no response from ides and that's why i would actually encourage anyone when you encounter this please reach out to my district office because we are trying to you know keep records of as many of this as we can not only so that if in the future something were to go wrong you can notify not only not only did you tell ides you also you know verified that with us so we can at least try to help you on that but um you know we we have we have spent hours um trying to get a hold of people at ides just to get follow-up information so that you know we can tell them look you have to respond to these people you need to give them a phone call you need to give them you know a letter confirming that you you know that you're acknowledging the fraud and actually that's part of the legislation that i'm working on is to require ides to give you written documentation within 24 to 48 hours that you have reported the fraud so that if something were to you know come back later so you know that that you're not going to be in trouble for something that you know the the fraudster um engaged in and i think samantha mentioned earlier um if you're you know if you're using a credit card there's actually all kinds of fraud protections that are built in and caps on your liability we don't necessarily have that um that same degree of protection at the state level and you know i i think that's not good for people in illinois you shouldn't be you shouldn't be penalized for a government screw-up yes and i know the idea is they're being extremely overwhelmed right now with all these unemployment scams that are going on with the pandemic and everything and they they're trying their best they are trying their best that i've heard um but also i believe there is an online application for um on scams and identity stuff for ides on the website i do have a link here in the presentation i can probably go back i'll go back right now yeah i think if you could show that and then we've also had a request to put up again the phone numbers for the three credit bureaus yes so here is the current slide so right here in this link right here is the online application that you can go to all the way in the right side of the screen you can go there and also report any kind of claims or fraud that you have for different ideas for unemployment you can go there and i believe you should have some kind of confirmation that you sent in a request um they are being overwhelmed right now but i know they are trying their best that they can right now maybe it could be um what things are going on it could be a little difficult but they are there is an online application that you could apply for um and then so you have here the online application you also have the phone number right here and i will go to the credit bureaus yeah and and for those who are watching um what we can also do is i we can um you know just we're we'll get a copy of this presentation from samantha so you can definitely um email me at mizaki at ilhousegop.org and we will be happy to email you a copy of it as well so or feel free to call into the office 630-852-8633 and i'll put those two in the chat box as well so that you can reach out to our office and we will be happy to uh send that information off to you so that you have it all right i'm reading another question here i think we got most of them um you know if i could follow up um with you samantha one you know you mentioned earlier and i thought that was really interesting id theft for children right so someone steals their social security card and goes uh to apply for a loan or steals their identity for that what are some you know how to how is that type of thing actually caught usually unfortunately is you can waiting to of course check it when you do a credit uh or when you check your credit score you can always do that but the issue with that is that a lot of people are not checking it's very uncommon for people to check the credit score of a child or an infant or even children while they become teenagers they don't really check their credit score until they actually are applying for some kind of form of credit so we do recommend that you check you can well honestly for children we recommend you do a credit freeze you do it credit free so that the information is secure when you do a credit freeze you they're gonna ask you to make some kind of security questions and as a guardian or the parent it's very important that you create security questions that are um easy for the child to remember so if you ask them you know what's the name of your favorite dog that child may have like two or three other dogs when they grow up and they might not have the same favorite dog when they get older so it's very important that you create questions and answers that are very easy for the child to identify when they become 18 or 20 or 25 or however they have to be um you should check the credit score if you do not want to do a credit freeze for the child and always try to um secure their information put their information somewhere safe that someone else might not have access to also um whenever you're throwing out any kind of mail for a child or an adult it's very important that you do not throw out or recycle important information such as social security numbers date of birth um your credit card or debit card number when you're throwing out that kind of male you can either shred it or you can scratch it out with a sharpie if you think comes off like that but it's very important that you throw out any kind of confidential information when you're throwing it out and also save the support information like social security cards and save it somewhere where it's going to be saved you should not by any circumstances um be carrying your social security card with you as if it's an id that should be somewhere safe unless you actually need it because if your wallet is stolen or your purse is stolen that person who stole your wallet or purse they'll have your social security number with them so it's always very important that you keep that somewhere safe okay um so one of the questions that we have is how do the ibes scammers make their money do they have our credit card number um you know is this something that we have to be vigilant about for years to come uh-huh so the idea scammers basically um from my understanding they're applying for unemployment under your name so they're taking the money that you will be making as an unemployed citizen and they're keeping it for themselves so they're getting the unemployment money that you would be making uh yeah and i think that part of that too is is that um once they actually even get that you know maybe so like for the debit card or something like that what they might do is even if it's something that's coming directly to your house like the debit card or something along those lines once that is established for maybe a month or something like that then they can do another address change you know and get things rerouted to a different location they might be able to um you know take the proof of the unemployment insurance and turn around and apply for um you know either a payday loan or something along those lines so you know there are all kinds of ways that um that that potential proof of an unemployment insurance dollars that are coming their way that that can be used in a whole host of ways to try to um extract some money out of the financial system and certain in terms of something to be vigilant for years to come you know hopefully it won't take um years but again one of the things that um i'm really focused on is you know trying to make sure that we've got you know much more stringent um authentication of uh the information that people are using to apply for benefits to make sure that we're not giving this information out fraudulently all right i do want to do one last call for questions and you know so if there's anything else you know please do put it in the q a box i'm going to check to see whether anything else is coming through facebook live um one of the other questions that said someone asked if we're keeping track of ids claims in our office you know absolutely please do uh email us that you were you know that you were the victim of um identity fraud because we do really want to try to get a sense of you know how big of the scope of the problem this really is and the more details and information that we get in terms of how these scams are working who's being impacted um how are people getting targeted again we can start working on the legislation to try to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again and again i put uh our email address in the chat box as well as um our our office phone number so we do encourage you to reach out um with anything you can all right so with that um so and my last name oh i was also asked how do i pronounce my last name so it is diane mizaki so i like to say you know use a chicago accent and then when you see the ch followed by a vowel sign in italian that's often pronounced as a k sound like yoki or uh bruschetta so it's mizaki so so key at the last um part of the name but my name has been butchered so many uh times over the years that i i pretty much answered anything that sounds remotely close all right so with that um i do want to say again thank you so much to samantha and the comptroller's office for this presentation for our district residents i know that we only scratch the surface on a whole bunch of these issues but hopefully you found the information helpful i do want to again remind everyone if you discover a fraudulent unemployment insurance claim that's been issued in your name call the ides illinois department of employment security i'll give you the number again it is 1-800-814-0513 and again you can also report the fraud online and again please do feel free to reach out to our office anytime 630-852-8633 or email at mazz o-c-h-i at ilhousegop.org so and we're happy to help you either with this or any other questions that you may have relating to anything involving state government local government the only thing we do try to stay away from is congress in the federal level but if you need some help navigating that um we have people who are willing to try to help you to make sure that you get your questions answered at least from the right agency or level of state local or federal government so with that i do want to say that um on behalf of myself and and for samantha it is an honor for all of us to be in state government and to serve you and we are here to help you any way that we can so please feel free to reach out again samantha thank you so much and thank you everyone for attending tonight and be safe