← ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
515 | Cyber Security Update: Social Engineering & Pig Butchering
00:36:34
In this episode: social engineering, pig butchering, cryptocurrency risks, scammer tactics, and avoiding being a victim. This week Brad speaks with cyber security expert Tom who will be giving some updates on the landscape of cybersecurity, what...
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- [00:00]
Brad
Hello and welcome to Choose a Five. Today on the show, we're actually going to do an update on securing your financial life. So Tom, who is a former FBI special agent and now works in cryptocurrency investigations for Binance, was last on in episode 397. And this was a real wonderful overview of really securing your financial Life. It's the 8020 analysis of, hey, what are the handful of things I can do to secure my financial life today? Now, is this going to get you in the top 1%? Maybe, maybe not. It's going to get you close, but these are things you absolutely have to do. Now, as part of our quote unquote in House expert program that we've always thought of, I want Tom to come back on and just give us some updates from time to time on things that he's seeing in the larger cybersecurity world, things that we should be doing today. That because this is constantly evolving, right, the bad guys, if you will, they are constantly trying to come up with new ways to hack us and attack us. And having someone like Tom, who lives and breathes us is really just such a bonus for our community. So with that, welcome to Choose Up Pie. Tom, thanks for coming back on the show. I really appreciate it.
- [01:18]
Tom
No, thank you, Brad. I really appreciate you having me back on. I told you this before we started recording, but I don't have a book to sell. I don't have a website to direct people to. I am here because I am part of this community. I have benefited personally. My life has changed drastically for the better because of you, because of J.L. jonathan, all the people that have been in the community, been interviewed, it's been a tremendous upgrade in my life. And so I want to give back in any way I can. And I want to talk about today what's called pig butchering or other types of scams that are really, really prevalent and really exploding and victimizing so many people.
- [02:02]
Brad
Okay, so that's quite a term, pig butchering. I've heard it in passing. And I got to be honest, I don't even know what that means precisely. So let's dive in. I'm just going to let you run with this. Just give us the overview.
- [02:14]
Tom
Sure. Yeah. So pig butchering, it's obviously not a great term or an affectionate term when you start talking about like scamming people, but that's what it's just been called. So the sort of etymology of that term is when you fatten a pig up for slaughter and then you kill them and that's, that's how.
- [02:33]
Brad
That's a horrible way of saying, no, no, nice way to describe that, I guess. Hold on.
- [02:37]
Tom
Yeah, but the analogy to these scams is that these scammers are building up trust, they're developing relationships with people online, quote unquote, fattening them up, and then they will fleece them of their money. And that's the slaughtering or the butchering part of it. It's just kind of a horrible way of just saying, getting people to trust the scammer and then scamming them of their money. So that's really all you need to know. It's an investment scam. That's the main one I want to talk about today because that's what I mainly investigate every single day of my life and where I see so many people lose all of their retirement funds. So it does target elderly people. It's called elder fraud. But not just elderly people. The demographic of 18 to 49 is also a huge part of this. So, you know, you have people that either have a lot of money invested and they are our target because maybe they're not as savvy or not able to discern what's a scam and what's not. But you also have people who are looking, maybe on the younger side who are just looking for that get rich quick type of option. And they see, oh, I can make a ton of returns over here, you know, oh, they're promising me 50% returns as opposed to, what is this 8% BTI stuff? Right. And people say, you know, in the crypto community especially, they're like, I want a hundred X. That's all I want, a hundred X or nothing. And, and with, when you have that sort of mindset, usually from a younger crowd, you're setting yourself up to be victimized.
- [04:12]
Brad
Yeah. And I know from being loosely a part of that, that kind of crypto world in the 2021, 2022, I, I had just such an interest in what was going on. And I mean, get rich quick is probably an understatement to describe, like what these people and most of them are like you said, kids, really like what they anticipate. And it's just, it is so far adrift from reality. And I do fear that they are just exceedingly susceptible to scams generally, but also just mismatch expectations with, hey, what is an actual investment versus, like you said, I mean, a hundred X or people are expecting a hundred plus percent return in six months, as if that's a normal thing.
- [04:57]
Tom
Right?
- [04:57]
Brad
Like, by no means is that normal. I think my back of the envelope heuristic is like, if something is earning guaranteed, quote unquote, like 10% or more in a year, you got to. Your spidey sense needs to come up of like, okay, there might be more risk here than I otherwise anticipate, so total sidebar. But Tom, I think that's important just for people to have like their own back of the envelope. It might be higher for some people, 10, 12, 14%. But goodness, if anybody's trying to say you're going to get a guaranteed return of more than 14% on something, I mean, you got to be really wary of that.
- [05:31]
Tom
I fully agree. And, and this is not to say that investing in crypto is bad. I invest in crypto so that I don't want that to come off. But it's risk, right? That's what it comes down to. Risk versus reward. It's what your personal risk tolerance is. But that's not the point of this episode. The point of this episode is to talk about how these scams work, their impact, and how to protect yourself. And what I see every single day is people falling victim to this. And the figures that I've actually read are that I know this is not a US centered only podcast, but for Americans specifically, it's 57,000Americans are being scammed every day. Whether that's investment scam, fake job scams, tech support fraud, where you, you know, you get that message that you have a virus or, you know, call us. All of these kind of fall under the umbrella of scams. But the one I really want to harp on today, like I said, is the pig butchering side of things. That's what I see growing the most. It's exploding. It's becoming a $3 trillion industry. For anybody who wants to just grasp that figure, there are scam compounds that are doing $50 billion a year.
- [06:45]
Brad
That's crazy. So, Tom, okay, how. I mean, this is massive, clearly. How does this type of scam start? What should someone be on the lookout for at the outset of this? I don't know if you'd call this, like, under the umbrella of social engineering or whatnot. But, like, like you said, they're in essence trying to, like, befriend you or get in touch with you in some way. Like, what are the initial touch points?
- [07:06]
Tom
Yeah, that's a great point. So how this actually normally starts is usually a random text message. I don't know if, Brad, if you've ever received one of those, I get Them all the time. I don't know if it's because the scammers are specifically targeting me for battling against them, but you know, I get this random like, hey Cindy, when are we going to go play tennis? You know, some random text, that's an entry point to a conversation. What they want is for you to respond and say, my name's not Cindy, it's Tom, you know, or something. Any kind of response is all they're looking for. Because what they're gonna then follow up with is saying, oh, I'm so sorry, I must have gotten mixed up. How are you today? And you say, oh, I'm fine, how are you? Rather than, you know, you make a wrong phone call to the wrong number and you say I'm sorry, wrong number. End of conversation, end of relationship. That's not the goal here. What they're trying to do is get an in in the door. And then they say, oh, I'm susie and I'm 38 years old. How are you today? What's your name and where, how old are you? And then they start this relationship, they start asking you personal questions, they say, hey, and then it gets into maybe the romantic side of things where they'll be like, oh, I hope you have sweet dreams, honey. You know, every single night they will be peppering you with affection and looking to just develop some sort of relationship with you. That's one way. Other ways are dating apps. You're already receptive to being reached out to on a dating app. So that's a great way for them to reach out to you. LinkedIn, social, all kinds of different social media entries. My mother in law is a real estate agent. One in that they try to use is real estate leads. They will say I am interested in buying this house. They're not interested in buying the house. What they're interested is building a relationship with that realtor. Okay, so basically just being aware that they are using any method they can to start a conversation with you, especially if you have to be receptive. That's your profession as a realtor. You know, you have to be receptive to incoming messages. Right? But that's really what they're doing is they're looking for an in, in some capacity to start building a conversation and building a relationship. Another really common one is if you have liked say a certain actor on social media. Well, they see your profile as liking, I don't know, George Clooney, right?
- [09:35]
Brad
Yeah.
- [09:35]
Tom
So George Clooney. They will then make a fake George Clooney profile and then Specifically message you. I've received these myself from people on Twitter and other things. They make a similar profile and then reach out to you directly saying, hey, thanks for being a fan, or whatever. Again, it's just an in. And I've seen multiple cases of people falling victim to thinking that's the actual person. They get excited, they build the relationship, and then they actually send money. To bring this down to a very personal level, I have people in my own neighborhood, many, many people who have reached out to me who. Who have relatives who have fallen victim to these scams. That's why not only do I do it professionally, but even personally, I see these scams on a regular basis. And it just tears me up inside to see someone lose everything they have, whether it's, you know, something that they've worked for in at a young age or all of their retirement savings. Very common is to hear a story about they lost $700,000. That's not a small figure that I deal with every single day. That is a very common figure. And I've had people take out second mortgages, home equity, lines of credits, do all kinds of stuff to generate more funds to send to these scammers. And that's where my mind directly goes, to this choose fi community. Because we are an investing community, and we are a community that has generally funds to invest. So I worry about this community specifically, not because they are not savvy, but because it can happen to anybody. I've fallen victim to these scams before. Like, I do this every single day.
- [11:16]
Brad
Huh. So we. In what sense have you fallen victim to it? I'm assuming you haven't, like, sent money to anybody, but, like, how far into it did you get?
- [11:25]
Tom
No, I didn't mean specifically this type of scam, but, like, just recently, literally just recently, I had someone in our local community page post about, hey, I'm getting my air ducts cleaned. If we get a bunch of people together, we can get a group rate. And I was like, oh, that's been on my to do list forever. You know, I'll do that. Count me in. Well, little did I know, because I don't know. Every scam out there, that's a scam. People will join local Facebook groups or anything like that who are not part of that community to generate business for their company, and then they will get in the door, and it's a bait and switch is what they do. They get in the door at a cheap rate, and then they'll say, hey, you've got this problem. You've got mold, you've got this. Then they'll charge you way higher than what is actually the cost to remediate that issue. That's just one scam that I didn't even know about that I fell victim to recently. I had someone come and do that. So just to say that anybody can be a victim, don't ever think I am so savvy and I am so good at this. I literally investigate scams every single day of my life, and I have fallen victim to that scam that I wasn't aware of. So that's why I want to bring this conversation to the Choose a Pie community. I was talking about that one. Like George Clooney example, I had a family in my neighborhood reach out to me because their relative literally is going through a divorce because they think that they're in a relationship with this actor. And unfortunately, they're very good at what they do. They're very good. These victims should not feel ashamed if you fall victim to this. That's the other thing is, like, we hear this number of 57,000Americans a day or so many billions of dollars. That's what we know about. That's what's been reported. Most people are not going to be public about falling victim to a scam. It is a shameful thing to think like, oh, I fell victim to this, but you shouldn't. These people that are doing these scams are very good. They're using tools like AI. Jeremy Schneider, I think his name is that runs the personal finance club.
- [13:32]
Brad
Yes.
- [13:32]
Tom
He's the guy who puts out those amazing infographics.
- [13:34]
Brad
Yeah, he's so good. And he's coming on the podcast very, very soon. Depending on when this goes live, it'll be within a week or two, probably.
- [13:41]
Tom
Oh, nice. Yeah, I follow him on Instagram and he just put out a thing, I think, yesterday about how someone took his voice because he's all the time just like you, Brad. Your voice is out there now. There are AI tools where I could take your voice, Brad, and make it say whatever I want. I could say Brad said, you know what? That whole VTS X thing, that's not what we're doing anymore. Things have changed now. You need to go all in on Brad Coin. Brad Coins the future. And literally it'll be your voice saying it. And that's what Jeremy Schneider posted. Someone had taken his voice and said, hey, we're going to do this whole other investing thing. So they're very good. That's what I don't want people to Feel is ashamed if you fall victim to this. The key, though, is to talk about it. Talk about how it starts. Like I said, they get that in, they develop that relationship, and then they also try to isolate you. The example I used of the relative in my community who's literally filing a divorce because she thinks that this relationship she's built up with this unquote actor is real. So she's going through a divorce right now. She's already sent five figures to this scammer, and I assume she plans to send a lot more once she has access to more funds. And that's where the family didn't even know until they started asking more and more questions. They try to isolate the victim so that they don't talk to their family about it. Because as soon as you talk, like, if my dad eventually told me, hey, by the way I've been talking, you know, I'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a scam. Usually people not in the tunnel of that relationship can see what it is.
- [15:15]
Brad
Right, right, right. Like, Jennifer Aniston is not like texting your dad. Let's be clear. But like you said, when you talk about it, I'm picturing it almost like a spell is broken. Like there's some odd spell they have over you, and. But as soon as it gets aired out a little bit, it's very obvious to everyone involved that this is not real.
- [15:34]
Tom
Exactly. And there you have very, like, this is not a whimsical thing they're doing. They're scripted. Every action and every conversation. They literally says, day one, script, talk about this. Day two, script, talk about this. Day three, script, talk about this. Then it gets handed off to another scammer up the chain. Once you start talking about actually investing, okay, then this scammer will say, hey, go to this website and you can invest. And they make it seem like you're investing your funds on your own into a platform that is legitimate. They are not taking your money. It's just you're investing. And then you'll put in, say, $50,000, and you'll see that money grow on the screen. It's not actually growing. The money is gone. But what you see is the money is growing. That's how this snowballs into $700,000 of losses. And then the final thing to be aware of is when you go to take it out, they will say, oh, there's a. Whatever $10,000 processing fee. What they're doing is they're just saying, like, okay, the person clearly is probably going to stop sending us money soon. Let's grasp at the last straw and try to get them to send one more time. And people will do that. They'll be like, oh, if I just send them one more chunk of money, then I'll be able to get my whole thing a million dollars that it's grown to. And that's just their last ditch effort to scam you and then they're gone.
- [16:57]
Brad
Wow. Okay. Yeah, that's wild. All right. I think we've done like an amazing job of setting this up, giving an understanding of what it is, the potential ramifications. But I guess action steps now what do you do? I mean, I think the obvious thing that comes to my mind is anytime you get an unsolicited text or I don't phone call, I don't know if they even do that. But let's assume text or emails. I mean, I engage with zero percent of those things. I just assume they are all spam. And if by some freak chance it's not spam and I blocked it or whatever, so be it. Maybe they can get in touch with me another way. But I just. Anything I see another thing, like these usps, I'm always getting links, like the post office sending you this. And here's a link, like I get those a couple times a week. At this point, just delete immediately. But that's kind of like a broad stroke. But realistically, Tom, like, how would you advise? Like, what do people do? What are the actual action steps here?
- [17:50]
Tom
No, that's, you're. You're going down the right road. So I personally also get all those, like, hey, you have a delayed delivery, you know, click here to track your package. And if you're not expecting a package, then your antenna goes way up and you delete it. But what if there's a very important package that you're waiting on? That's when it works. Yeah, because it's the sense of urgency and just not being totally aware at the moment. That's when it gets you. So that. Go back to your question about action steps. The action steps are even if you engage with somebody and say, sorry, wrong number, or oh, you click a link, you know, or something, we're going to make mistakes. None of us are going to be perfect. You do your best to not do those things. But the ultimate end point of knowing when to stop is the key of this person that you just met online. Do not invest based on their advice. Do not send money even to what appears to be a legitimate avenue. They Will send you lookalike domains that are spoofed in some way. Just never take advice from someone you met online about sending money or investing at all. In terms of like, here's a link. Here's a relationship I'm building up and I'm trying to. You know, I get it. I say all of this when Brad may just be someone online that you're listening to and we're sharing advice, but that's different because what they're directing you to is saying, like, go to Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab. Do it on your own. Brad is never. If you ever receive a link from Brad, do not click it because Brad did not send you that link. Brad will never send you a link personally. To invest in anything, buy yourself, you know, Google, Vanguard, find the actual website for these companies. Invest in legitimate platforms. And legitimate platforms could be cryptocurrency. Again, Coinbase, Binance. If you're not in the US There are legitimate platforms to invest in cryptocurrency if you want to do that. I do invest in cryptocurrency. So again, I don't want this to be about crypto bad. It's about scammer bad. And the key is using only reputable companies and not sending money to people online that have just sent you a link or a unsolicited text message or anything like that. So that's. That's the real big takeaway. But not only that, you may be fine now that you listen to this episode, but now I'm challenging you guys. You know, they always say, like, takeaways from a. From a. Choose a five episode actionable steps, right? Not only do this for yourself, but more importantly, talk to your friends and family, especially maybe your parents or grandparents or anything like that. Like, I'd say this all the time. And I actually realized to myself that I had not talked specifically to my dad about this until literally three days ago. And I called my dad and I was like, you know what? I know I've talked generally about this, but we need to sit down and have a conversation about you not clicking links or not sending money. And I gave them the whole spiel, right? Yeah, do that. I go get my hair cut at Great clips. I start talking to the lady about pig butchering because I'm like, I need to tell everyone about this. I'm looking to protect everyone. So that's what I'm challenging everyone in this community to do. To not only listen to this episode and be aware of the problem, but then to also spread awareness and talk to people bring it up, because you never know, someone could already be a victim. Like I said, 57,000Americans every single day. I've had multiple families in my community reach out to me, and that's only the ones that I'm aware of. There are unknown victims out there right now that don't even know their victims. And if you start having this conversation and saying, yeah, they build up this relationship, they send you to a website to invest, or they get you to go to another common one is they will get people to go to a Bitcoin ATM. They'll say, hey, you're 20 minutes away from a 711 with a Bitcoin ATM in it. All I need you to do is go down to that bitcoin atm, deposit some funds, and then send it here. For whatever reason that they've conjured up, whether it's tech support fraud, they say, oh, you've got a warrant out for your arrest. So this is what cracks me up. They'll say, you've got a warrant.
- [22:02]
Brad
Bitcoin.
- [22:03]
Tom
Yeah, they say you've got a warrant out for your arrest, but if you send us some amount in bitcoin, we're not going to come arrest you. As a former FBI agent, I will say in every one of my plans that I wrote up, to go out and arrest somebody, never. Is there a caveat that if that person sends me some bitcoin, you know what, we're going to throw the case.
- [22:23]
Brad
Out, you're off the hook. Oh, my God. Yeah. And let's be clear. Obviously you work for a crypto company. You've mentioned crypto a bunch of times. But for anybody writing this off saying, like, oh, I'm not involved in the crypto world, this doesn't apply to me. That is not the takeaway from this at all. 0% crypto on some levels makes scams a little bit easier. There's the untraceability aspect of it, or potentially that it's easier. Once somebody's gone, it's gone. There's no, like, big brother watching over. So I think it makes the fraud a little bit easier from my kind of outside perspective. But Tom is not saying, like, this is only valuable for people in the crypto world. Clearly not the case. It's the exact opposite. Like he said at the outset, this is for people. Many people who are an older demographic may be more susceptible to it. But like he also said, 18 to 49, I think, was the age range. And frankly, I actually just texted my daughter while we were recording this, because she had remarked, Tom and I didn't even tell you this a couple months ago that she got on the same day two identical text messages from two totally different numbers. You talk about scripts, right? Yeah, this was so fascinating. It was two totally different area codes, like seemingly having nothing to do with each other. And she just texted to me, it was quote, I feel like cooking steak, do you want to come over for dinner tonight? And she got one in the morning from like whatever X area code and then seven hours later from a totally different number, totally different area code. And I mean, I guess that was page one of this script of hey, let's socially engineer this person on the other line. They didn't know that it was a 12 year old kid in this case. But I mean she, luckily I've, I've tried to drill this into her head that like never engage with people on online, never click anything. My kids are like, at this point in time you would be. So maybe I'm a little overboard frankly. But like they click on nothing I have like drilled into their head. I'm like one bad click can mean the end of a whole lot of money potentially or somebody hacking in, et cetera, et cetera. So like my kids are maybe now a little too scared, but I guess that's probably not, not so bad but of clicking anything. So I would advise anyone listening to this just please exercise extreme caution. There is no reason to ever click on anything, anything from anybody that you don't. I mean I would even argue from anybody like, but certainly from people you don't know. Never click on anything. If you get an email that even if it looks legit and there's just a simple way, like I got a UPS tracking number the other day. I was like, there's a 98% chance this is the legitimate person. But they just gave me a tracking number. I literally copied it, went over to ups.com pasted it in and saw, okay, this actually was legit. But I'll be damned if I'm going to click on a link for no reason whatsoever. There was no benefit other than just a little bit of ease. But the downside is so disproportionate, Tom. So like that's how I think about. So I don't know if maybe I'm a little overboard, but I think I'm pretty buttoned up on this.
- [25:18]
Tom
Yeah, no, the lesson there is exactly what you do is take whatever information, if you're getting an email or a text or anything, like let's say for example, you got an email saying, oh, your bank account's in jeopardy in some way. Okay, great. Delete email. Log into my app or the website the way I always do and verify that, you know, I always tell the story of a judge when I was swearing out a warrant. After I was done swearing out the warrant, he said, hey, by the way, my wife got an email saying that we spent $80 on the Apple Store, but we didn't. And I said, okay, well, let's do this. Have your wife. He called his wife right then and there. I said, go into your Apple account. Is there some sort of purchase? She said, no. I said, okay, then you're probably fine. Let's just go one step further. Let's look at the email address that they sent it from. Oh, yeah, it came from Apple. Microsoft.com. well, that's a clue. Microsoft.com is not a real place. Right. So it's one of those things where just go to the source. And to get back to the point you brought up earlier, most of the victims I deal with are not in the crypto community. They are not crypto investors. These are people who have just been enticed to do so or have been told, hey, this is where we need you to send the money. It just happens to be in Bitcoin or something like that. They are not crypto people. Most of the victims. There's a bank, I think, out of Kansas, where the CEO or whatever the term is for the head bank guy, you know, lost $50 million. The whole bank imploded because he was sending and investing money this way. He was not a crypto guy. That is not the message here. The message here is that anybody can be a victim. And I do want to bring up one more action step if you are a victim of this. Because I don't want to just be like, oh, just don't be a victim. Because there are so many victims. So if you know a victim or if you are a victim of this, contact the police immediately. Contact your local police. Local detectives are getting better and better at this. It's still new to a lot of detectives, but usually I deal with, like, one or two guys in each state that is basically like the crypto guy for the state for the local level. And then you also have the FBI, the Secret Service, the irs. All three are very good. Secret Service in particular, and IRS CI are very, very good at this. The FBI has an entire unit that I was part of that is strictly dedicated to virtual currency. So if you don't have any luck on a local Level, you can always escalate that to a federal level. But the key is report it as soon as possible. You can go to ic3.gov and make a report there. And the key here is, yes, in most cases, once you send that money, it might be gone. But what I do personally, legitimately in my job is I deal with either training or assisting or working alongside law enforcement every single day. And we try to get some restitution for some of these victims if we can act quickly, because crypto moves very fast. The scammers move very fast. But if you do it quickly enough, if you make the report, there's always a chance that there are funds sitting somewhere that we can then work with law enforcement to seize and get back to victims. So that's the other actionable step is as soon as you are aware that you've fallen victim or someone you know is make a police report. And the one thing I want to warn about is that there are companies out there that are recovery companies, that some are legitimate. But many recovery companies will say, I can get your crypto back. Say you lost $500,000. They will say, I can get your crypto back if you just give me $10,000 upfront. And now you're getting victimized again. So many of these recovery companies are scams themselves. They are either just like a shady business, and maybe they're like kind of like a legitimate business. But what they're going to do is they're going to do normally not a very good job investigating and tracing the money. I will look at those and be like, oh, look at all the mistakes they made. And what they're going to ultimately do is then refer you to law enforcement anyway, because law enforcement is the only thing that can get you back that money. Do not trust a recovery company to say that they can get you back money, because the only way to get the money back is to have law enforcement involved. So you might as well call law enforcement to begin with. And then one final note is these scammers have learned that as well. So the scammers, it could be the same exact guy you've been talking to and built a relationship with. Once he's done fleecing you of your money, now he's going to go sit in a different chair and he's going to become a recovery company. He has your information, he knows who you are, and he knows how to work your buttons. And he's going to say, oh, did you just fall victim to this? Oh, I can help you out. He's Just going to switch seats and now target you that way because they already have your information. So those are just things to be aware of that I want people to know about. Action steps, protecting yourself on the front side, but also once you're a victim, what you can do.
- [30:13]
Brad
Wow. Yeah, that is really, really helpful. And you mentioned in passing there ic3.gov, that's the number three ic3.gov it's the Internet Crime Complaint Center. And yeah, on this site, it looks like it's through the FBI. So IC3.gov is really important. Tom, I just wanted to ask just a couple super quick things as we close this out. So first, there are instances where again, with these links, right? Like somebody purports to be like tech support or something, and they're like, hey, I want to take over your phone or take over your device to fix X, Y and Z. Like, or, oh, you got a virus, maybe you. Like you said they're sitting in both chairs. Hey, you clicked on this malicious link and now I can fix it. Just let me take over your device, like whenever, even when I see this with. Again, I'm probably In the top 1% of crazy people who are worried about this. But like, even like my alarm company, like, they needed to help me update something on the keypad and they wanted to send me a link. So they essentially wanted to be live with me in the room. And I'm like, no, I really don't want to do that. Can you just give me the instructions on the phone call and we can deal with it? But like, even that sketch me out because I just don't want anyone weaseling their way into my phone.
- [31:30]
Tom
Yeah, what they'll do is. I think you're referencing screen sharing.
- [31:33]
Brad
Yeah, that's what it is. Thanks for your time.
- [31:34]
Tom
Yeah, so what they do, and that's the key is what they want to do is they want to get. It's not even necessarily about installing malware per se on your computer and infecting it in some crazy way. What they're really trying to do in a lot of these instances is just gain access to your computer so that then they can start doing things. A case I worked while I was at the FBI, that's exactly how it started. Tech support fraud. They said, hey, you have some sort of virus. It's very sophisticated. They say, hey, I'm from Company A, you know, Norton, whatever. And you know, they'll send you an email that says you have a $800 bill from Norton to take care of or whatever. You click that or you call them up and they're like, oh, by the way, you have a. Let me transfer you to the FBI. We need you to be a part of this case to help us out to get these scammers. You know, there's. It's very. It can be very elaborate, but at the end of the day, what they're going to do is they're going to log onto your computer. And there was one lady who said, oh, great, you're going to help me. And she was very trusting. Unfortunately, that's what they prey on. And she said, yeah, all right, I'm going to go to the grocery store. I'll be right back. You've got access to my computer. Just go ahead and fix it. Right. Well, while she's gone, they've logged into her bank account. They've created a crypto account for her at some platform, let's say Coinbase. And now they've deposited money onto Coinbase, bought bitcoin, sent the bitcoin to themselves. By the time she gets back, all of her money is gone. What they're trying to do is gain access to your computer to be able to do these types of things.
- [33:06]
Brad
Yeah, that is crazy. That is absolutely crazy. And final thing I wanted to talk about. This actually reminded me when you talked about that video that Jeremy Schneider put up is in this day and age of people being able to spoof your voice, right? Like, I see a potential, and I know this exists, but a significant potential for, oh, hey, a grandchild calls frantically, quote, unquote, grandchild calls their grandparents. I'm in trouble, I need $5,000. Blah, blah, blah. Like, and it sounds like them. It, it, it is them. For all intents and purposes, that's the voice that they're hearing. But, I mean, how can people, like, the way that I've kind of talked about this with my girls is we actually have, like, a code phrase that we talk about. I'm like, if you bring this up in conversation, I will come to you anywhere, anytime, any place in the world immediately like this. I know this is like Code Red, and I know also that it's you, frankly. But is that a reasonable way to go about this? Are there other simpler ways to do it? Like, how do you think about that?
- [34:07]
Tom
Yeah, it's funny you bring that up because my dad and I, ever since I was a child, have had a code phrase, no kid. And it's funny because I hadn't thought about that in a while. I still remember it because it was drilled into my head. That if my dad ever needs to call me for whatever reason, and it wasn't because of AI 20 years ago that he was coming up with that, but it was just here's a way to verify. And emails do that nowadays, I don't know if you are part of any companies or platforms that do that, but you can have an anti phishing code word that you put in and then every single email in the corner of it will have that word. So you can look and say, oh, they know my anti phishing email. So that actually happens on a legitimate basis nowadays, like for websites.
- [34:50]
Brad
Yeah.
- [34:50]
Tom
But yeah, personally, let's just be honest, the tools are going to get scarier and better. And so ultimately, just verifying the best you can is all we can do. But again, I grew up with that code word in my head that if something ever happened and someone was trying to say, hey, something happened to your dad, you need to come over here. Well, if that person didn't get the code word, I don't trust them, you know?
- [35:15]
Brad
Yeah.
- [35:15]
Tom
So that's actually a great idea. And going forward, it's just about being as diligent as you can. We're all going to make mistakes, but it's just about being aware, talking to people about it and doing the best we can.
- [35:28]
Brad
Yeah. Great advice, Tom. Thank you so very much for being here. Thanks for being part of our community. People might recognize you from multiple of our Facebook groups as Tommy Dogs. So if anybody is looking for, hey, who's this guy? Tom, that's, you know, obviously security is important, right? So your full name's not out there, but Tommy Dogs on our Facebook groups. And yeah, I would love to have you back for episodes like this, but also shorter snippets as you see see things in the world of cybersecurity. We're going to definitely put them on a bunch of our roundups. So, Tom, thanks for being a friend. Thanks for being here.
- [36:02]
Tom
Yeah, thanks for having me. And if anybody does have questions along these lines, feel free to shoot Brad an email@feedback choose fi.com you know, I'm happy to hop back on and answer questions here live or in the Facebook group, wherever I can help. That's all I want to do.
- [36:18]
Brad
Awesome. All right, again, thanks for being here, Tom, and thank you for listening and take action on this. Just be aware. It's so important. This really, really matters. And that's why we dedicated an entire episode to this. Thanks for being part of the choose of I community.
- [36:33]
Unknown
Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Choose a VI community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player, just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choose fi.com subscribe and it's really, really easy to get on the newsletter list right there and I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox.
- [37:10]
Brad
So that's the way that I keep.
- [37:11]
Unknown
A pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community, we have choose a FI local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to choose a vi.com local and you'll find a list of all of Those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI or you have a family member or friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways choose a Fi episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the Fi community and even though.
- [37:45]
Brad
It'S a couple years old at this.
- [37:46]
Unknown
Point, it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence. What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life and then choose a VI created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free? Just head to choose fi.com fi101 and again, thanks for listening.
- [38:14]
Brad
Sa.