- [Instructor] Let's go over
what is identity theft?
And to go over this,
I want to share a really amazing resource
that the US government has in their website.
So if you go to usa.gov/identity-theft
as I'm showing in the screen,
basically not only they define
that identity theft happens
whenever somebody steals your personal information
to commit fraud.
And I mean, of course they can use this information
to do many different things,
like apply for credit, file taxes,
get medical services, and so on.
But they also have different information
about the warning signs of identity theft,
potential victims of identity theft,
and the types of identity theft, right?
So I'm not gonna go into every single one of them in here.
However, you know, it is very, very useful
to actually know there's some early warnings
that you may become aware
to identify if somebody's potentially,
you know, doing a social engineering attack
for identity theft purposes, right?
For example, you know,
you could be a victim if you received some bills,
even through the mail for items that you didn't buy.
So I'm talking about not only email,
but regular mail as well, right?
Debt collections for accounts that you didn't open,
denial for loans applications,
in many cases, actually, nowadays
if you are ordering something online
and probably, you know,
an attacker can impersonate, you know,
some type of entity like Amazon,
or, you know, eBay, or, you know,
wherever you actually go
and buy your goods and services from,
they can then start
either impersonating some type of bill
or some type of error in an order,
or even the ability for you to track an order.
And then from there,
steal your personal information to commit fraud.
Now, anybody can be a victim of identity theft
or a social engineering attack related to identity theft.
However, children and seniors
are the most vulnerable nowadays.
As a matter of fact, we actually have a lot of resources
in this website related to child identity theft,
and also information that in many cases,
senior share their personal information
with doctors and caregivers,
and attackers can impersonate, you know,
those entities as well, right?
Now there's different types of identity theft,
there are tax ID thefts, medical ID thefts,
social ID thefts.
And there are others,
depending on the geographical location that you reside.
Of course, this is a US government site,
so it's tailored to the US,
but you may actually have similar resources
and invite you to actually research a little bit,
obtain information from your local government.
Hopefully they have something similar than this.
And if not,
of course you can gather some really good, useful data
from this site as well.
Now, now this website also provides
a lot of really good information
on how to prevent identity theft.
Some of these are very self explanatory, right?
Never share your social security number.
And if you're outside of the US, you know
anything similar to a social security number
or, you know, some government ID information,
or birthdays,
or bank accounts, you know, that's self explanatory.
But also pay attention to your billing cycles, right?
That's a really good one.
They also go and suggest
that you should update the firewall settings
or any type of security tools
that you may have installing your system.
But also whenever you're in the public wifi,
potentially you actually use a VPN to encrypt your traffic.
And that actually allows you to protect
also against man-in-the-middle attack.
And you're gonna be learning about those
a little bit later throughout the presentation
and the course in here.
Also review your credit card
and bank account statements on a regular basis, right?
These are all very well known best practices
that of course, if you, you know, maintain it,
and you follow them regularly,
it will absolutely help you
to prevent identity theft attacks, right?
But again, this is a really good resource,
at least from usa.gov
that explains the threat of identity theft,
and how to protect against those type of attacks.