← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
1883: Fraud-Proof Your Money: The New Rules for Keeping Your Bank Accounts Safe
00:36:09
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- [00:01]
Commercial Narrator
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- [01:01]
Howie Mandel
There's a part of me that everyone sees I'm Howie Mandel, the comedian. Apparently I know what funny is. Funny bought me a house. But I also know what isn't funny. Ocd. I've lived with OCD my entire life and people throw the term around like it's no big deal. But OCD is severe, often debilitating. It's a mental health condition that involves unrelented, unwanted thoughts that can make you question your character, your beliefs, even your safety. General therapy can help with some things, but for ocd, it can actually make things worse. That's why I want to tell you about nocd. NOCD is the world's largest treatment provider for OCD and is covered by Insurance for over 155 million Americans. Their licensed therapists specialize in ERP, the most effective treatment for OCD. If you think you might be struggling with OCD, go to nocd.com to book a free 15 minute call. They are here to help. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. A network of 130 million of them. In fact, you can even target buyers by job title, industry company, seniority skills and Did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started@LinkedIn.com Campaign terms and conditions apply.
- [02:31]
Farnoosh Torabi
So Money Episode 1883 how to Fraud Proof your money. The new rules for keeping your bank accounts safe.
- [02:40]
Martha Underwood
You're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day, get a 30 minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers, and from Farnoosh yourselves. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons. Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to SO Money. People are being targeted through children, through your emails, through the breaches that you just need to be diligent. And I say we need to be our own archivists of our own data, knowing what our information is and rotating it as much as possible. I rarely give out my Social Security number these days. If you absolutely need it, why do you need it? And I question, why do you need it? Right? A lot of times they don't. They should already have it, they shouldn't be asking for it again. And so just be very diligent about the information that you share and make sure that you can protect your information and rotate it as much as possible.
- [03:45]
Farnoosh Torabi
Welcome back to SEW Money, everyone. If you've been following along, you know that I recently experienced some fraud in my own business checking account to the tune of about $12,000. And it was a gut wrenching ordeal. Thousands of dollars disappearing overnight because someone got hold of my routing number. The bank caught it, but the disruption and the stress was real. And I'm going to be honest, even as someone who spends her waking hours afraid of fraud and thinking about protecting my money, I almost miss the warning signs of this one. Which is why today's conversation is really important when we're heading into the fall and the holidays. It's peak time for identity theft and online scams. Fraudsters know we're distracted, they know we're busy. And they also know that we're spending a lot of money. Maybe we're making a lot of it, too. So to help us all stay one step ahead, I've invited back Martha Underwood. She's the founder of Prism. Martha and her team are on the front lines of protecting our financial identity and our legacy. And she's here to talk about some of the latest scams we gotta be watching out for. From PayPal, Microsoft micro deposits to spoofed IRS texts, to sophisticated AI voice fraud, and most importantly, concrete steps we can all take to guard our money and protect our families and our peace of mind. Let's get into it. Martha Underwood, welcome Back to sew money. I'm really happy you're back here because we have so much more to discuss since you were on last time. Last time, we talked about estate planning and protecting your financial legacy. Today we turn to the topic of protecting our financial identity. And as listeners know, I've recently experienced some hardship around this. And you say that as we head into the fall and the winter and the holidays, this is actually peak season for a lot of online fraud because the fraudsters know we're busy and we're scattered and we're not paying too close of attention to things. We're opening up stuff. So we're gonna get to all of that and your advice for us. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
- [05:56]
Martha Underwood
I'm so happy to be back. Yeah. This is prime time for people to start. When I say probing, right. Either making a little deposit into your account to see if it's valid. There's a scam right now going on with PayPal where you have companies saying, hey, accept this 2% of these 2 cents, or acknowledge that I sent you this 2 cent that I might have never worked with before because you've won X amount, or we need to transfer dollars to you to reimburse you for, and you inadvertently say, okay, I'll accept this. And then now they have your bank account information. Know that it is a valid person and know that it is a valid bank account, and they may use it to cash checks for themselves or someone else. Right. So they know that this is peak season where people are either opening new bank accounts because some people open bank accounts just for the holidays and then close it, or they're opening new credit cards. And so they're looking at all kinds of different ways to get access to your information. In order to get access to your dollars, we gotta be vigilant, and we can talk about some of the ways that we can protect ourselves.
- [07:06]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah. You know, some things are just obvious. Right. You know, you get a weird text message. I get so many of them about job opportunities. The other day I got a text that I actually had to show my husband because I needed a second opinion. It looked like it was from the irs. So, coincidentally, I am waiting for my state refund and. And I delayed my filings. I filed in, whatever it was September. And so now I'm supposed to get my state refund. It hasn't come yet in the mail or it hasn't hit my bank account. And this text message, they actually had in it a sum, an amount of money that resembled what I was expecting from the state for my refund. So I thought maybe it was legit. It wanted me to click on a link to provide some additional information to process the refund. So I showed it to my husband, and then with his phone, he actually just typed in the URL. And we went to it. And, you know, it looked very legit. It looked like a government website. And then we scrolled to the bottom and noticed there wasn't really an address. And the page itself was kind of more like a landing page. So that was a red flag. But I almost fell for it.
- [08:23]
Martha Underwood
IRS is a big scam. Right now, everyone is trying to. All of the fraudsters are using different tactics because they know that people filed late or people are looking for their. Their refunds and all of those things. So they'll send those text messages that are phishing. They'll send emails that are phishing. And whenever you get an email like that, I always Google the address first to make sure that it is valid. And it should always be.gov. and typically the IRS isn't going to be sending you information unless you contacted them and they're responding to something. They rarely initiate a conversation unless you're going through an audit or whatever else you're going through. But you'll get a letter, they won't text you. And so I always tell people, validate that. Google the URL and then look at the information and say, hold on. This number doesn't look right. This doesn't look like the amount that I'm supposed to get and validate that right your side. And never authenticate through a text to validate information. The other way that they're getting sophisticated on trying to capture your information is I got a party invite. Like, we're going into party season. It's the fall. Just either networking, going into fall parties, Thanksgiving, Christmas. That was from green envelope. From green envelope, quote, unquote. And it was from someone I knew. I clicked on it and it downloaded a partyinvite exe, which is an executable on my phone. And I'm like, this should have taken me to the invite. And so I deleted that immediately and wiped my phone and was just like, they're getting very sophisticated. I went back to look at the original email and the only thing that I missed was the V and green envelope was really large. Wow. And that's a small detail. Right. But because I'm so used to getting invites and this was a trusted person, I did not think that I would have to examine the email that deeply this is to show you just how far the people are going to capture your data, to get your information, to be able to steal your identity, to get dollars, all of the things right, to open up accounts in your name. And so now it's like, really have to be diligent in looking at everything that you get and making sure that you're not downloading something that's going to compromise your laptop or your phone and capture your data.
- [11:03]
Farnoosh Torabi
So then, Martha, what did you do after that? You said you wiped your phone, but what does that actually involve? If you accidentally open a cryptic file and now the fraudsters are going through your phone to scrape your data, like, what do you do?
- [11:18]
Martha Underwood
So I deleted. First I deleted it from my downloads, and then I went to my settings and deleted the trash. Because on your phones, even if you delete a message or you delete a document or a download, it'll go to a temporary trash folder on your phone or even on your computer. I went to that temporary folder and then I wiped that. But then for good measure, because you can typically back up your information in the cloud, I went ahead and just reset my phone and then backed up my information and redownloaded it and reinstalled everything. And I also wiped all of my history on my browser, which wiped all of the cookies, which sometimes you want your cookies because it makes your pages last load faster. I wiped all the passwords. I did all of that because, again, I wanted to protect my information. It's not a problem for me to have to re input that information. It's more of a headache if I just left it there and they were able to capture my information. And now I gotta fight with the bank or my credit card because they stole my identity and ran up some bills.
- [12:21]
Farnoosh Torabi
Oh, my gosh. So, all right, my audience knows because I mentioned this last week I had some fraudulent activity in my business checking account, which I've had for 15 years. And never in those 15 years have I had an incident like this. So what happened was someone deposited a fake check with my account number on this fake check. The check did not have my name on it anywhere. But this person wrote the check to themselves, and it immediately got deducted from my bank account. It was about $5,000, like $4,950. The bank flagged it before I even noticed. They texted me, and now I get this text. I don't know what to do. Is it true? Is it legit? Is it really from my bank? And so I went into my bank account and I saw that that Deduction had been made, then called my bank, and they said, okay, thanks for calling us back. We're going to refund you. This was clearly fraudulent activity. But look, the money's already out of my account, and now it's going to take two business days to get it back. And that's annoying. It's not like you see this on your credit card. This is real money. And they asked, do you want to sign up for fraud restriction? Which essentially means you have to make this bank account of yours inactive, more or less. Like you can't make any deductions from it. No checks, no transfers, no debit, no ATM money can still get deposited in for, I think, 180 days while you migrate to a new bank account. And at first, I said no after this first incident. But do you know, 24 hours later, another deduction, another fraudulent check hits my bank. This time it's for 7500 doll. And I was the one actually who caught it. And I called my bank and they said, yep, you're right, so we're going to refund you, but it'll take two business days. And I said, you know what? Yes, please do that. And also, let's do the fraud restriction, because as. As annoying as it's going to be to have to get a new bank account and make these transfers and tell all my vendors and all my billers that I'm, you know, I got to change my account number with them. It's obviously worth it. But this is the hassle that now I'm in and PSA to everybody. You know, be vigilant about checking your bank account. And you say that fraudsters really go after these business bank accounts. Tell us why.
- [14:57]
Martha Underwood
Because they have money in it. Most of the times they have money in it. And you may not catch it as quickly as a retail customer, because you're paying vendors, your money is being out. You might be on automated payments. So you may just see, okay, $5,000 went out. And you'll check what that is at the end of the month. You'll reconcile it later. Right? And so you. We see an increase of attacks on business accounts because those business accounts typically have minimums that you had to have in it, Right? And so if you have a $10,000 minimum, they know that, and they're going to do the research. So these fraudsters are very sophisticated. They're going to do the research for the different types of banks and say, if this is a business account, what's the minimum that they have to have? And so when they're probing or trying to get money out through fake means, whether it's a digital debit or a check that they are trying to fly through, they will know how much they can possibly get if there's money in that account. Which is why they try got the 5,000 and then they came back and they increased it the next day. Yeah.
- [16:10]
Farnoosh Torabi
Do you think the person who committed the fraud actually got the money and now the banks have to.
- [16:15]
Martha Underwood
Oh, absolutely, they got the money.
- [16:17]
Farnoosh Torabi
Wow. So I thought maybe they had to wait, you know, for all the clearances before they get the cash, but no. Okay. They're $12,000 richer.
- [16:27]
Martha Underwood
Oh. Here's the thing. It a couple of things. If your bank account has been in good standing and this is the norm where you are sending out payments of 5,000, 10,000, 3,000, 2,000, there is no reason for the bank to think that this one transaction, there's a problem with it. And so that money flows to that person pretty quickly. So they got the 5,000 and they're out. Wow. The game for them is to hit that same account as many times as they can to see how much they can get away with. So they got the 7500 again. Now, your bank might have caught it in time and stopped it and did not pay it out, but best believe that 5,000, typically that first one goes out. But there are banks that, depending on the bank that you bank with, there are banks that will flag it. And depending on how they've been set up on the back end, they'll be able to call that money back or just say, no, I'm not going to pay that institution or honor those dollars from that institution and work institution to get that money back. But it just depends on the mechanism that the person who was being fraudulent used to receive those dollars. Because from a digital banking perspective, or just cashing it, like you won't know on your side unless you go through the fraud process and be like, how did they get this money?
- [17:57]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah. And so my follow up question to that is, how did they get my routing number and my account number? I've had this account for again, 15 years. This has never happened. And I rarely write paper checks, send.
- [18:09]
Martha Underwood
Out paper checks a couple of ways they could have gotten it. There's been several breaches across several different industries. The irs, the, the medical companies.
- [18:24]
Farnoosh Torabi
Right.
- [18:25]
Martha Underwood
Some fintechs, the phone companies, the cell phone companies. So if you ever wrote a check from that account to any one of those entities and the fraudsters are on the dark web and got access to a database of all of this information, then they have the account, they have the routing and account number. I assume, I typically assume that all of my information is on the dark web.
- [18:57]
Farnoosh Torabi
Wow.
- [18:58]
Martha Underwood
Because of so many breaches, which I typically say the best practice is like for me and my debit cards, I will rotate them like every other year. I try to just say give, just give me a new card. Which I think we will see the industry do that. Which is why they're now doing virtual card numbers. Right. You can use a virtual card on your online that might be different from your physical card so they can track more easily where this authenticated from. And if you can't be like, I just had dinner at in D.C. and then my virtual card was used somewhere in Miami at the same time, like they can, then they'll know, okay, immediately that's fraud. Right. And so you'll start to see that. But a good practice is to do that with your account number and your routing number. That's a little different because you typically tie that to so many other things as well. But I say still go through the hassle of changing it all and change the account number because the routing number is going to stay the same. But you can change your account number, say, hey, I just want you to change my account number. Because good practice for me. I've had this account for 15 years and people. And again, the fraudsters know that. Because average account, average life lifetime account is anywhere from 15 to 20 years.
- [20:25]
Farnoosh Torabi
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- [21:41]
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- [22:10]
Howie Mandel
There's the part of me that everyone sees. I'm Howie Mandel, the comedian. Apparently I know what funny is. Funny bought me a house. But I also know what isn't funny. Ocd. I've lived with OCD my entire life and people throw the term around like it's no big deal. But OCD is severe, often debilitating. It's a mental health condition that involves unrelented, unwanted thoughts that can make you question your character, your beliefs, even your safety. General therapy can help with some things, but for ocd, it can actually make things worse. That's why I want to tell you about nocd. NOCD is the world's largest treatment provider for OCD and is covered by Insurance for over 155 million Americans. Their licensed therapists specialize in ERP, the most effective treatment for OCD. If you think you might be struggling with OCD, go to nocd.com to book a free 15 minute call. They are here to help.
- [23:08]
Commercial Narrator
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- [23:48]
Farnoosh Torabi
Oh my gosh. Well, you're a cybersecurity expert, Martha, and you just mentioned one of the things that you do that probably most of us don't, which is this rotation of debit cards. What else do you do that more people should. You actually know what can be compromised and how we're most vulnerable?
- [24:07]
Martha Underwood
I wouldn't say I'm a cybersecurity expert. I would say that I am paranoid. And especially being in banking and in tech for so long, everything can be compromised because it's code, right? And so you can crack code. But I always say, change your passwords as often as you can. Sometimes use a password generator that will create a long, unique password for you. Don't click on any links online if you are not sure of who sent it to you. If you get free offers, Google the vendor, Google the addresses and make sure that they are free. The one thing that I will say also people with children, because I have children, I have sons, and they're playing all the time on their games and they're in these chat rooms with people putting links out there. I tell them, do not click on anything. If you're playing, just play the game. Do not click on anything. Because they can be playing on the home computer and they can compromise the home computer because you have bad actors in there saying, oh, you're in here. You can get this free thing. And kids are innocent. They're like, oh, free, I don't have to ask my mom for money. I'm going to click on this. And now your computer is compromised, and they downloaded keystroke software. And as you're going on to it, you're typing in your bank account information into something, and now they have your bank account information. And so there's so many different ways that people are being targeted, through children, through your emails, through the breaches, that you just need to be diligent. And I say that we need to be our own archivist of our own data, knowing what our information is and rotating it as much as possible. I rarely give out my Social Security number these days. If you absolutely need it, why do you need it? And I question, why do you need it? Right? A lot of times they don't. They should already have it. They shouldn't be asking for it again. And so just be very diligent about the information that you share and make sure that you can protect your information and rotate it as much as possible.
- [26:17]
Farnoosh Torabi
We haven't even touched on AI, the advances that fraudsters now have at their fingertips to absolutely manipulate and trick us. You know, they have the use of voice technology. They can use that to make fraudulent voice calls. And this has been happening for a while. It's only getting more and more prevalent. But I remember a story where my husband told me his grandmother, now this was years ago, she gets a phone call and it sounds like it's one of her grandsons who's in trouble and needs money. And. And she had the wherewithal, thankfully, to hang up and call him directly and then found out it was obviously fake. And that was back 10 years ago at least. So I can't even imagine what's going on today, but tell us how some of this AI is working its way into the identity theft world.
- [27:08]
Martha Underwood
Yeah. So again with the AI, the voice is one of the leading ways that they are basically fraud committing fraud with the elders, because they're our most vulnerable population right now. And if grandma or grandpa hears that grandchild or child is in danger, they're going to do whatever they need to do in order to keep that child or grandchild safe. And so I always say, have a safe word. Also, be careful about what you put online because you have bots that can go and scrape information off of your Facebook page, off your Instagram page. So if you say, hey, my dog's name is t', Challa, and I put that out there on Facebook and it got scraped then, and that's my secret code name, then the AI will know that. And so you need to be more thoughtful in how you're going to authenticate, even family members, because it's okay who threw up on the ship during our cruise to the Bahamas, like someone who wouldn't know, like that type of stuff. And you just throw it in there and say, hey, mom, or hey, Dad. I just wanted you to know that it's truly me because there's so many. There's so many tools out there that can capture your voice and get very sophisticated. And the types of scams that they are putting out there. And voice is one of the main ones. The other is again with the emails and how they're spoofing websites. Because now you can create beautiful websites using AI. You can use a prompt and create a website. Like you said, the IRS one looked legit. They can model it almost to the T. And so be very careful and diligent. And that's why I say just Google or try to research the URL says something is coming from Google, the phone numbers that they say call you back from. Because a lot of the times even the phone numbers can be spoofed. Right? Like it's a real phone number to the irs, but that's why you have to call them and say, hey, did you initiate this? And they will. They'll say, no. So it can be. People will say, oh, man, this is annoying, because I have to go through all of these other steps. But always assume that it might not be legit because you want to err on the side of caution and keep your data safe and keep your information safe, especially when you can't trust your eyes or your ears anymore because of AI, Truly.
- [29:47]
Farnoosh Torabi
And I'm just like, I'm thinking now, you know, I have a podcast. My audio could easily be scraped and reinvented and replicated. And I'm out there. I have information myself out there. My life, my children. And I feel like as much as we are giving our kids these devices, my kids don't have phones yet. But when we do, we don't educate them enough on these frightful things. We need to scare them, right? That these devices can be portals to exposing yourself to fraudsters, criminals. Did you hear about Charlotte Coles? She's a financial columnist for New York magazine. This was about a year ago, at least, when she wrote the article. She talks about getting scammed out of $50,000 over a phone call, and it was someone claiming to be a CIA agent. I'll put the article in the show notes so you can read the whole story. But long story short, where it really got critical for her and where it really, like, kind of messed with her head, and where she ultimately gave them this money was that they threatened to go after her kid. They knew stuff about her life, and they knew where she lived, and so that created panic. But obviously all that stuff was already out in the public domain, so anyone could have fabricated that. And anyway, she got terrified, put $50,000 into a shoebox. Someone pulls up on her street, gave her directions to just put it in the trunk. She did, and they drove off. And then pretty quickly after that, realized I had been scammed. And she was scared to tell this story because she's a financial, financial advice columnist. People were really mean to her, saying things like, how could you have done this? You're an idiot. But I think it just shows us that we are all vulnerable. And these scammers, they can get information about us and make it feel very dangerous for us. And that danger is imminent.
- [31:47]
Martha Underwood
I don't blame her at all, because it's emotional when you have that much information on you and they feel that they position the threat just right. Anyone can talk about what they would or wouldn't do until you're in that situation. Right. And so if you have children and you're like, I need to keep my children safe, what's $50,000 to make sure that my family is safe? And so the thing is, people don't understand just how deep these scams go. Like, for instance, there was a child who got coerced. It was in it. I don't know if it's still happening, but the FBI got involved. It was a scam happening to young boys, young athletes, where they would have a Instagram, a fake Instagram model, message them and have conversations with them, get interested, and then coerce them into sending nude pictures to them. As soon as they send the nude picture, they get a phone call through either Snap or Instagram, and it's someone demanding money from them. Them.
- [32:54]
Farnoosh Torabi
Yeah.
- [32:55]
Martha Underwood
Or they are going to blast the image all over their school. Right. That is another form of financial extortion that they're getting from the children. They'll say, either cash at me because they know or Venmo me because they know the parents will give them money, or they'd have at least $100 in their account. Or if they get the parents involved, then they up the ante and they're like, you got to send me $2,000. And it happens. And so it's not just the adults that's getting scammed. Like, no one is safe from this. Like, you talked about the kids not being educated. It's critically important that we educate them. That's why I was saying on the games, you wouldn't even think to think through that. Like, they're going to. They're just playing with their friends, and someone comes in, and then they're just like, hey, we want to join this and throw in, hey, get this free gear or get this free skin. And they do that. And now their machine is compromised, and now your financial life can be ruined.
- [33:56]
Farnoosh Torabi
So much to talk to my son about tonight. And it's like, he's 11. He's not too young to learn about all this stuff.
- [34:04]
Martha Underwood
Look, I tell my boys all the time, but. And that's why we just have to be diligent across the board. Look at your financial statements. Look at the statements from the bank. Look at your business statements, if you have a business, and make sure that there are no anomalies as it relates to payments. Payments going out. Make sure you're looking at your credit card statements, because they're using credit cards, too. Right? They'll have a $2 probe here, and then you'll see a $10 you're like, what's happening? Then all of a sudden you'll see $1,000 charge or $5,000 charge. So it's. We have to be diligent in making sure that we are watching all of the transactions and interacting with trusted vendors and financial institutions that we are familiar with, with that we trust.
- [34:51]
Farnoosh Torabi
And that brings me to my last question, which is we've gone through a lot of the things that we should do as consumers and people who want to protect our money. There's a lot that we can do. But there's also another interested party here, which is banks and financial institutions. And I remember talking to someone one time who was a cybersecurity expert and he said, listen, it may not feel like it in the moment when you've been hacked, but banks invest a lot of money in protecting our identity. It's their number one priority. Because at the end of the day, if they lose your trust, they lose your money and your trust, they got nothing.
- [35:25]
Commercial Narrator
Right.
- [35:25]
Farnoosh Torabi
So what are you seeing or what have you learned that banks are doing? How are they working overtime right now to protect our identities and our finances.
- [35:37]
Martha Underwood
So this is top of mind. This is one. When you look at banks and you say what their strategic plans are, you look up their size and their strategic initiatives. The number one thing is cybersecurity. How to keep your account safe. Whether they're investing in identity software to ensure that you are who you say you are when you are accessing your account, whether that's digitally or coming in. Because you have to have different channels on, how can I authenticate someone? And so there are millions of dollars being poured into that multi factor authentication that's being implemented and that has been implemented for some time. Biometric authentication to ensure that again, you are who you say you are. Right. There are several different checks on the back end when you come in or you're doing a check. Cause sometimes when you go in, I don't go into the banks often, but when I do go in, you're sitting there like, what's taking so long? And it's because they're going through their checks, right? And balances to ensure that again, you are who you say you are, the balances are right. There's no suspicious activity. This check that you're depositing or that you're cashing is valid. All of those things. Whether they put a hold on that check, because now you may see holds come back on checks because they're like, because it's been so much fraud where we might have had this immediately available to you if you had dollars to cover that check in that account. Maybe now we hold it for at least a day or 24 hours to ensure that we're not going to. This is not a fraudulent check. Yeah. And so the banks are absolutely. They are top. This is top of mind for them. And they are trying to be as proactive as they can be because there are attacks coming from all angles, from the retail side, from the business commercial side, from the lending side, from the credit card side. And through each one of those channels, there's different methods of authentication and checks that need to happen, which is why you see robust fraud departments at banks. And like your friend said, you may not see it, but they are working overtime, triple time to ensure that they're trying to keep your dollar safe. Which is why we haven't seen, like, a huge, big issue with the banks, because the banks are pretty solid.
- [38:02]
Farnoosh Torabi
And if I could give them one piece of advice, I would say, please make it easier for us to change our accounts, to change our account numbers. When I get a credit card stolen or a credit card goes missing, I get a new one in the mail, like, instantly. New number, everything. And I just wonder why we can't do that with our debit accounts. I know that I have to go and update everyone. It just depends on the bank. I don't know, it just. It felt like such a. I had to go through so many hoops.
- [38:32]
Martha Underwood
I have a bank that can do it in one day, and I have a bank that it might take them seven days. So it just depends on the banking, the financial institution, and the processes they put in place.
- [38:45]
Farnoosh Torabi
Good to know. Martha Underwood, tell us about prism. I know last time you were here to talk about your digital legacy planning platform, we got into it a lot more then. But I want to have you remind us again about PRISM and the important work that your team is doing.
- [39:01]
Martha Underwood
Yeah, and it dovetails into this, right, because again, if my, my grandmother, I need to be able to track her expenses and her money and her documents to ensure that there isn't any fraudulent activity there. So PRISM is, has been implemented at several banks now where you can go and aggregate your financial accounts, your real estate assets, your personal, personal assets, and then your documents, and lock it down and share it with your family, friends, and allow people to see that if you want them to or not. You can share that and keep your privacy, or you can say you could share it and let them see it, or you can keep your privacy and say, I don't want you to see any of it. But it's important because with so much happening in the world and people needing access to our information, it's important that one, we are the ones that's giving consent for you to have access to that information and we can control who sees it and when they can see it. And two, in an emergency, when someone needs to get access to that information, it's just a click of a button that they can go and actually have that right. Because when someone has a stroke or someone has unexpectedly died and I need to get access to this information pretty quickly, you are in this state of grief where you won't know where to go to get things. And especially as women, because everyone comes to us to keep things keel and safe and okay, we'll handle it, we'll figure it out. But yet we're the ones pulling our hair out trying to go find where the passwords are, where this information is, what medication they were on, on all of this stuff while we're trying to grieve and deal with the information or the crisis at hand. And so the banks already are trusted entities, which is why we sell to them. And this is just another product, another valuable product that they can provide to their customers because they're already keeping your money safe, they can keep your data safe as well. Well, and that's what we're doing. So it's been awesome. Several RIAs, independent wealth advisors are using us as well. We have some high end wealth companies that are leveraging our platform to help catalog and store that information for high net worth individuals. So I'm here Marthaetprism.com and then getprism.com for your vault needs and to keep your data safe.
- [41:28]
Farnoosh Torabi
And Prism is two M's. Yeah, we should mention. But I'll have that in the show notes. I'll link to it in the show notes. Martha, thank you so much. Come back anytime.
- [41:36]
Martha Underwood
Ah, my pleasure. It's always great to talk to you, Farnoosh.
- [41:42]
Farnoosh Torabi
Thanks so much to Martha Underwood. Stay safe out there everybody. And I'll see you back here on Friday for another installment of Ask Farnoosh. I hope your day is so money.
- [41:53]
Martha Underwood
Foreign.
- [42:05]
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Martha Underwood
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Martha Underwood
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Farnoosh Torabi
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Martha Underwood
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Farnoosh Torabi
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Martha Underwood
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Martha Underwood
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