Transcript CFPB FinEx Webinar: Protecting Against and Recovering from Identity Theft and Scams October 2021 Presenters: Kelle Slaughter, Identity Theft Program Manger, Federal Trade Commission; and Lisa Schifferle, Senior Policy Analyst, CFPB Office for Older Americans; Facilitator: Heather Brown, Ed.D., CFPB Office of Consumer Education, FinEx Program Lead >>Dr. Heather Brown: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's CFPB's FinEx webinar on "Protecting Against and Recovering from Identity Theft and Scams." My name is Heather Brown, and I am the program lead for the CFPB FinEx program. I will be your host for today's webinar. We will send out a copy of the slides to everyone that provided their email when they registered and logged into the event. If you did not provide your email and would like a copy of the presentation deck, you can also email the address that is in the Chat, and we'll get a copy to you. I'm going to first have our logistics person give an introduction. Then I will go through CFPB FinEx quick introduction and introduce the speakers, and then we'll start our presentation. Robin, would you mind doing the logistics slide? >>Ms. Robin Dixon-Jefferson: Thank you, Heather. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. Before we get started with the official program, I just wanted to go over a few logistics with you. If you are having any difficulty and need to use your audio only in order to access this event, the telephone number is here annotated on this slide as well as it will be placed in the Chat Box for you. If you require the use of closed captioning, that link has also been provided for you in the Chat Box, and we will put it in there periodically to ensure that everyone has it. All attendees for this event will be muted upon entry. They are requesting that if you have questions or comments, you'd use the Chat Box, which is located on the right-hand side of your computer screen, and make sure that you're chatting to everyone so that the panelists will see your questions and/or comments. If you are having technical difficulty and would need to speak to someone, my email address is annotated here as well on this slide, and we can put that in the Chat Box for you. This event is being hosted by the EMT team, and Susan Funk is a part of the team. She will be joining us. So we will be able to get to you, and also, the team wanted us to remind you that they will be posting a post-event survey inside the Chat Box for you guys to download the link and take the survey for them. Heather, with that, I am going to pass this over to you. >>Dr. Brown: Thank you very much, Robin. I'm going to first run through our FinEx introduction, and then I am going to present our speakers for today. >>Ms. Dixon-Jefferson: Heather, you now have the slides. You can push to the next one. >>Dr. Brown: Okay. There we go. Thank you. All right. So the disclaimer, I have to go through for each webinar. This presentation is being made by a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau representative on behalf of the Bureau. It does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Any opinions or views stated by the presenter are the presenter's own and may not represent the Bureau's views. The inclusion of links or references to third-party sites does not necessarily reflect the Bureau's endorsement of the third party, the views expressed on the third-party site, or products or services offered on the third-party site. The Bureau has not vetted these third parties, their content, or nay products or services they may offer. There may be other possible entities or resources that are not listed that may also serve your needs. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a 21st century agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective, by consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives. I welcome everyone to go to the link that you see here, and you'll get a copy of the slides or you can take a picture of the link if you like, but this is how you would sign up to join the CFPB Financial Education Exchange, or the CFPB FinEx list. You will receive updates on research and tools and webinars via email. You can engage with over 30,000 financial practitioners via our LinkedIn discussion group. It currently has about 3,500, but we're hoping that we can get all of the people that are on our list to join and post things and get some discussions going. So, if you haven't done that, we encourage you to do it. We also will help you stay up to date when we get back to having regional meetings and conferences, which hopefully won't be too far off. We're also open to ideas from you on things that you need, and we can connect you with presenters around money management issues if you need that for groups that you work with. I'd like you to just be reminded for those that have seen it before and for those that don't know, we have a very robust and frequently updated COVID-19 webpage, and this page will bring you to information on mortgage and housing assistance, managing your finances. We're also connected to the White House Coronavirus Task Force page, CDC, and Health and Human Services. So every major resource that you may need through the Federal Government, you can get through this portal on our page, and it's updated regularly. So please share it with those that you know of that may be in need of getting information. We also have a picture, a screen print of our Online Resources for Practitioners page, and the link is at the bottom. I'll have all the links in one frame in just a second, but if you go to the left column and you see where it says Adults under Multilingual and Newcomers, the Adults button is where you would click to go to find out about upcoming webinars and also to see past webinars. This is our Webinar Archive page, and this shows the first two that are in there. We update those periodically, and we have three or four that are going to be updated soon. If you scroll down when you're on this page, you'll see over 50 webinars that usually include the transcript and the slide deck. We welcome you to download those and use them for your own training. You can use them as much as you want, recycle them. The only thing that we ask is if you change them, to take our logo off and put yours on. Otherwise, you're welcome to use the resources. They're there to help you do the work that you do. This is a list of all the links I described, Coronavirus page first. I didn't mention our publications. Many of you are familiar with it, but you can order free publications, either singly or in bulk for classes that you may be working with. These are printed, and many of them are four-color. Some of them are professionally bound documents at no charge, and the shipping is at no charge to you. There are hundreds of publications at this site that are free of charge and you'd probably find useful. You don't have to re-create things. We hope that you can use what you have there, and if there's something that we don't have that you need, let us know, and we'll see if we can help out with that. The third bullet is where you write if you have any questions regarding this webinar or anything we've talked about, and the fourth bullet is our LinkedIn page, which you can go into, click to join. And about once or twice a week, I add everybody that's requested to join, and you can post announcements there. We just ask that you don't do any hard selling through that site. And then our final, Adult Education page, which we've already talked about. All right. With that, I'm going to introduce our speakers today. Our first speaker is Kelle Slaughter. She's the Identity Theft program manager for the Federal Trade Commission. She's responsible for creating and implementing the agency's coordinated strategy to combat, investigate, and help consumers avoid and recover from various forms of identity theft. Kelle has over 17 years of consumer protection experience. She joined the FTC as an investigator in the Southwest Region in 2018. Prior to joining the FTC, Kelle was a director of Investigations at the Better Business Bureau serving North Central Texas for 3 years where she initiated and conduced investigations, led a multi-agency law enforcement task force, and gave presentations to consumers, businesses, and law enforcement. Before joining the Better Business Bureau, Kelle spent a decade working for the Texas Office of the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division as an investigator supporting enforcement actions initiated by the division. She earned a dual master's degree in criminal justice and conflict resolution, which is an excellent combination, and master's in higher education from Dallas Baptist University, where she was an honors graduate. She brings a great sense of humor and authentic truth-telling to the table. I want to next introduce Lisa Schifferle. Lisa Winthrop Schifferle is a senior policy analyst in CFPB's Office for Older Americans. She probably wins the award for being most invited as a guest speaker on the CFPB webinars because she can do so many topics. She leads the Managing Someone Else's Money program and supports the office's work to combat elder financial exploitation. Ms. Schifferle's career in consumer protection spans more than 20 years. Before coming to CFPB, she spent 12 years at the FTC where she trained consumers, businesses, and advocates on scams, identity theft, and cybersecurity, and she also served as FTC's identity theft coordinator and litigated fraud and data security cases. Ms. Schifferle spent 8 years at the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau as a staff attorney and supervising attorney. She represented low-income clients in consumer bankruptcy housing, public benefits, and employment cases. She received her BA Summa Cum Laude from Yale College and her JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. I'm so excited to introduce these wonderful speakers to you today. I thank them for their time in advance, and with that, I am going to hand it off. It looks like Robin already got controls back. Thank you, Robin. We're all set, and, Kelle, you're ready to go. >>Ms. Kelle Slaughter: Thank you, Heather. Good afternoon, everyone. As Heather mentioned, I work for the Federal Trade Commission, FTC for short, and for those of you who don't know us, the FTC is the nation's consumer protection agency. We protect consumers by bringing law enforcement actions against companies and people that violate consumer protection laws and by educating people in areas such as identity theft, which brings me here today. Next slide, Robin, please. So today we will cover some recent trends in identity theft, and I will share some tips to avoid and/or recover from identity theft. Lastly, I will tell you how to get more information to share with your clients, your community, your family, your friends, or even use for yourself. Next slide, please. FTC collects consumer reports in a law enforcement database where we keep an eye on the marketplace. It helps us to see where people are having problems. In essence, we and other agencies use the database to see patterns and determine where we should focus. So we highly encourage people to report problems to us, and I will walk you through how just a little later, but for now— Next slide, please. —I'd like to show you this chart that maps the trends of multiple categories of identity theft reported to the FTC over the last 3 years. You can see from the graph that we saw increases in each category of identity theft at some point in 2020, which is probably not surprising. Today Lisa, the next presenter, and I will be highlighting three of these trends. The biggest jump indicated by the turquoise— Uh-oh. Are we okay, Robin? Okay. She'll get the chart back up in just a second. But the biggest jump that we saw that's indicated by the turquoise line when we get back to that map represents government benefits fraud. Credit card fraud, which is represented by the orange line on the map, and loan fraud—it's one back. There we go. Loan fraud would be that green line that you see there. Before I move on, these charts for identity theft trends are accessible to you on our website, and you can even drill down to certain quarters of the year instead of doing what I did here and looking at 3 years. Occasionally, reviewing this information can help you prepare for those questions that your clients may bring to your office. Next slide, please. Robin? >>Ms. Dixon-Jefferson: Are we on track? I'm sorry. We were at the slide. >>Ms. Slaughter: Yes, we are. Can you go to the next slide, please? >>Ms. Dixon-Jefferson: Okay. >>Dr. Brown: Kelle, is this the slide you wanted? We can't hear you. All of a sudden, we hear nothing. >>Ms. Dixon-Jefferson: Yeah. >>Ms. Slaughter: No. I'm waiting for the next slide. It's the one after the map that starts with Government Benefits Fraud. >>Dr. Brown: There you go. >>Ms. Slaughter: Okay. My screen must be frozen. Okay. Go back one, please. There we go. Thank you so much, Robin. I appreciate that. I want to talk to you briefly about government benefits fraud. This was the number one identity theft fraud trend in 2020. The FTC saw an astounding 2,900 percent annual hike in the number of identity theft reports in which people said, "My information was used to apply or receive government benefits, such as unemployment compensation," and they had not filed claims. Payments made as a result of these fraudulent claims went to identity thieves and not the people whose names and personal information were used. Now, it may surprise you to know that unemployment benefits fraud has been around for years. This trend likely increased in 2020 due to several factors, but among them, criminals were drawn by the billions of dollars in Federal funds that were made available to help people left jobless by the pandemic, and then many businesses closed, making it difficult to confirm that the person applying for unemployment benefits was actually who they said they were or had been actually unemployed. Very often, people are unaware that their information has been used for unemployment benefits fraud until they receive a notice from the State unemployment benefits agency or from their employer about their supposed application for benefits. Next slide, please. So what should you tell somebody if they seek your advice about government benefit fraud? Well, people should immediately report this type of identity theft to the State unemployment benefits office, where the claim was filed, and their employer. Be sure to keep a copy of any confirmation they get, and just like opening a credit card or getting a loan, a government benefits claim requires a Social Security number, and I'll talk a little bit more about credit freezes later. But the person coming to you should consider freezing their credit as an additional step, because if someone is using or misusing their information, a credit freeze is the most important step that they can take in order to prevent identity theft or further identity theft. Then the person should also monitor their credit report for suspicious activity, and we'll talk about this a little bit more too in a few minutes. Before I move on, though, I want to quickly bring to your attention that some people may come to you stating that "I received a 1099-G form showing that I've got unemployment insurance benefits that I never received," and of course, as I mentioned, the money went to the identity thief instead. If you or someone you know, your clients, your family members gets one of these forms showing receipt of unemployment benefits that they never got, you should report that to the state unemployment benefits agency. That agency can assist that your client by investigating and issuing a corrective form, and to get more guidance about how to report this fraud to IRS, you want to go to irs.gov. Next slide, please. Dating back to 2016, credit card fraud has been one of the top three types of identity theft reported to FTC. What's concerning about this is not that credit card fraud is one of the top three most common types of identity theft, but the spike in the number of reported cases from one year to the next. Last year, instances if identity theft by credit card increased by 44.6 percent. Identity theft by newly opened credit card accounts increased by 48 percent in 2020. Credit card theft can happen in a variety of ways. Identity thieves go digging through the garbage for documents like preapproved credit card offers that they use to apply for new credit cards to use fraudulently. A website might get hacked and a credit card number stolen and shared. Some thieves even call presenting to be someone else and asking for credit card numbers. I mean, there are many, many, many scenarios, including— Next slide, please. —skimming. Thieves have stolen credit card and debit card information over the years using this method. Skimming is when thieves use a device that reads credit card information from the magnetic strip on the back of the card, records the card's code numbers to another electronic storage device, and then enables the criminal to make a copy of the card to make unauthorized purposes. Well, we shifted to using chip credit cards and debit cards to safeguard people against this fraud. The introduction of the chip card in 2015 resulted in a 76 percent decrease in fraud in less than 3 years, which is pretty awesome, but thieves were still hard at work. And now they're shimming. This is their update on skimming. Shimming is a process where fraudsters use a shim, put the shim into the card reader, that allows them to copy the chip card information. They can't use that information to create another chip card, but they can use it to clone a magnetic strip card. While skimming is a rare thing now, it doesn't mean that it's gone away. As recently as January 2021, over 1,000 bank customers were targets of a major skimming scam in New Jersey. The criminals attempted to make off with over $1.5 million. You have to be aware that either one can take place, shimming or skimming. Next slide, please. So keep in mind that a scammer, in the mind of a scammer, everyone is a target for identity theft. So I'm going to give you some tips for yourself and for your clients and others that you want to share with to help reduce the risk of identity theft. Next slide. What do we do to avoid debit and credit card fraud? Well, credit card transactions can be halted and reversed at any time. So using a credit card when possible is a great idea. Criminals often install skimmers on ATMs that are not located in overly busy locations since they don't want to be observed installing the malicious hardware or collecting the data for that matter. Therefore, it's not surprising that ATMs in secluded vestibules or even outdoors as well as fuel pumps are easier targets. People may be able to avoid shimming if they go inside of the bank to use an ATM or inside at a gas station to pay the cashier. When these options are not available, they should be sure to investigate the card reader before using it to look for any foreign or protruding parts, and definitely, cover the pad when you're dialing in your PIN. There's always someone looking. It could be over a shoulder. It could be a hidden camera. Even if the ATM or payment machine seems otherwise fine, we should always advise people to cover it with their hand when they're entering the PIN number. So the PIN number is essential. Without it, criminals are limited with what they can do with stolen data. Watching statements is key to detecting identity theft. If a person notices unfamiliar charges, they can go to identifytheft.gov for step-by-step guidance on how to address these transactions, but we'll talk about that a little bit more in just a few minutes. Next slide, please. Here we have listed more ways that people can make it a little bit more difficult for identity thieves. On the left side of your screen are some common ways that personal information is stolen offline. I mean, most of us carry a treasure trove of information around inside of our wallets, our cell phones, or both. Clear your wallet of documents you don't need such as Social Security cards, and then we should be sure that people are using security features on their phone to make sure that it's protected like with a password or face identification or biometric authentication. Thieves may be someone that the person knows like a caregiver or a contractor, family member, or friend. To stay safe, we should always advise clients to keep documents with sensitive information like credit cards and bank account statements and other financial documents in a secure place, particularly under lock and key. Sometimes we receive sensitive financial information in the mailbox, and this can be easy pickings for an identity thief who knows when trash day is. So scaling back on paper records is always a great idea, and tell your clients to get their account statements online instead. And be sure to shred those documents that they're throwing away. We've probably heard these things a thousand times, but there are still people out there who haven't gotten around to do it, or they think the real danger is actually online. While these methods on the left side of the screen seem a little primitive in this day and age, old-fashioned offline identity theft is still just as dangerous as high-tech identity theft. So let's take a look at the right side of the screen. People can make it a little bit more difficult for identity thieves too when we're online by using a stronger password. Of course, mom's maiden name or the last four digits of a Social Security number are obvious passwords. We have to encourage people to use difficult-to-get passwords—numbers, letters, symbols, to incorporate all of those in the password. Using a multifactor authentication when it's an option is always a fantastic idea. Some accounts offer this extra security by requiring something in addition to a password to login to the account, and that something extra can fall into two categories. One, it can be something that your client has like a passcode that they get or security key, or it could be a scan of their fingerprint, their retina, their face, whichever. It's always a great idea to have that second layer. Never click on links that are in unsolicited emails, but instead use a Web address that is known. The same goes for text messages. We should encourage clients not to click on suspicious links in unsolicited text messages. It's not enough to have antivirus software on a computer. Keeping antivirus software up to date is imperative. Criminals look for weak points to exploit before the software companies can fix them. So updating software regularly as soon as possible when a newer version comes out helps to make sure that your clients have critical patches and protections against security threats, and be sure to remind them don't ignore the reminders to make updates. We don't want to leave the door open so hackers could get to that information. They should always make sure that their internet connections are secure. Be careful when using a social network or file-sharing software, and finally, look for indications that a online shopping site is secure, especially during the shopping season. Before they enter their credit card, make sure that they look for the "s" in "https" because that "s" stands for secure. That means that the information is encrypted before it is transmitted. Next slide, please. You've probably had clients contact you complaining about annoying robocalls and telemarketing sales calls, and mingled among legitimate calls, I mentioned earlier that some thieves will impersonate others and call asking for personal information. First, please remember that telemarketing robocalls are more than just annoying. They're illegal. The FTC has sued operations selling medical alerts and home security systems, interest rate reduction services, auto warranties, and free vacations. To eliminate robocalls from legitimate businesses that want to comply with the law, encourage your clients to register all of their phone numbers on the donotcall.gov registry, the landline and cell phone numbers. People often forget their landlines. Unfortunately, though, this is not an end-all for robocalls made to cell phones. There are some scammers who will use the same technology to reach out to your clients. Spoiler alert: They ignore the Do Not Call list. This is when you want to use the call-blocking technology build into the cell phone. When suspicious text messages come to your client, you may also want to encourage them to forward those messages to 7726. This is helped my cell phone, personally, tremendously because I would get a lot of text messages that were scams. You forward the message to 7726. A response comes back from your carrier, your phone carrier, saying, "Thank you. What phone number was used in order to send you this text?" You send them the text message, and you delete the message. Some cell phones also allow you to block text messages too. So that's always an option. Just make sure that your client knows not to click any links. I don't particularly tend to answer unknown calls, but if I choose to or if you choose to and there's a scammer on the other end, we always encourage the person to hang up immediately. Those are some tips that you can pass on to your clients about those unwanted calls and text messages. Next slide, please. I mentioned credit freezes a little earlier. Fraud alerts and credit freezes are both preventative and recovery measures that are available to everyone. A fraud alert makes companies verify identity before granting new credit in a name. Fraud alerts are free and available to anyone who suspects they may be affected by identity theft. In the past, the initial fraud alert was placed for 90 days. Now the initial fraud alert lasts one year. When the fraud alert expires after 12 months, your client can extent it for 7 years if they're a victim of identity theft and provide one credit reporting agency with an identity theft report, which we'll talk about a little bit shortly. A credit freeze, on the other hand, limits access to credit reports and credit scores. So no one, including the individual, can open a new account until the freeze is lifted. The person will be required to take a few extra steps the next time they decide to apply for credit. Credit freezes are free to place and to remove. Credit freezes are available to anyone, including children under the age of 16 and incapacitated adults. All they have to do is contact all three credit reporting agencies in order to put a credit freeze in place, and it stays in place until the person lifts it. Now, which one is right for your client depends on their personal situation, but freezes are generally best for people who are not planning to take out new credit. Next slide, please. Sometimes even when people take these steps to reduce the risk of identity theft, it can happen. Next slide. One of the most important steps someone can take to protect themselves is to monitor all three credit reports to make sure that there are not signs of identity theft like unauthorized accounts opened in their name or new addresses popping up on their personal information and so forth. Then it's important that they take action. The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires each of the nationwide credit reporting companies—Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion—to provide everyone with a free copy of their credit report at their request once every 12 months at annualcreditreport.com. Careful review of the credit reports can help spot any new fraud quickly. The credit reports can be ordered from each of these three credit bureaus at any time, and they can do it at one time, or they can stagger them. But the things that you want to tell your client to look for or you're going to help your client look for is any incorrect names, addresses, Social Security numbers, or employer information that may appear. Unknown accounts or unknown charges on current accounts. Inquiries also from companies that they had not contacted can also be an indicator that there may be some fraudulent action taking place. Once they've reviewed this and corrected any credit report information, they want to make sure that they close accounts that the thieves have opened, remove bogus charges from existing account, and if their Social Security number is misused for employment, they want to go to the Social Security Administration and create an account with them. And then importantly, just as importantly, they also want to deal with debt collectors. All of this information is available and is detailed step by step at one of the most important websites that I want you to jot down today, and that is identifytheft.gov. Next slide, please. Robin? [Pause.] >>Ms. Slaughter: Robin, can you go to the next slide, please? [No audible response.] >>Ms. Slaughter: I'm sorry? [No audible response.] >>Dr. Brown: I think Robin is at the Report Identity Theft slide. It says Web-based consumer guidance, create— >>Ms. Slaughter: Perfect. >>Dr. Brown: Okay. >>Ms. Slaughter: It just occurred to me that I must be having some issues with my computer stopping and starting the video because I'm not seeing the slides advance. So I apologize, Robin. Thank you so much for keeping up with me. So, yes, reporting identity theft. Identifytheft.gov is the place to go. It's the Federal Trade Commission's one-stop site where people can get a personalized recovery plan, sample letters, and forms to mitigate the damage caused by identity theft. And the next slide, please. Identitytheft.gov—oh, can you go back one? There we go. It looks like my computer just caught up with you. Thank you so much, Robin. Identitytheft.gov has step-by-step recovery plans for more than 30 types of identity theft, including child identity theft, identity theft using—your medical identity theft, and those involving bank accounts and loans. This website will walk you through what you need to do. It will give you links to credit bureaus and other agencies you need to contact. It will prefill the letters you might need to send to creditors and others and many, many more things. So you want to make this your first stop when that client comes in and says that they've experienced identity theft to make it easy to get the guidance for recovery, and when you report here, when you have your clients reported into identitytheft.gov, we make their complaint available to other law enforcement agencies investigating identity theft crime. I'm going to show you how easy it is. All you do is click Get Started. Next slide, please. You would select the statement that best describes your situation, and here I selected "I want to report identity theft." Sometimes people just want to go to it for advice, but in this case, we're going to create a report. Next slide, please. There are many different categories to choose from. The most popular ones are listed here, but there's a catch-all at the bottom. So you select all that apply to your client's situation, and it opens the door to everything you need to do to recover. Here, I selected credit card accounts. Next slide, please. Once you selected the category, the system will start creating the identity theft report, and all you have to do is enter specific details about the theft. Next slide, please. Once all of the information has been entered, an identity theft report is generated. When we do need this report is probably what you're asking right now. Well, you need to send this report or your client needs to send this report to the credit bureau if they require it because the credit bureau in turn will block negative information resulting from the identity theft from the credit reports. Credit reports will be restored to their pre-crime status. They will probably notify the credit of the information about the block, and then the creditor cannot fill, transfer, or place for collection any debt if notified by the credit bureau that it resulted from an identity theft report. There are instances when you want to file a police report at the local police department, and you would advice your client typically that a police report would need to be filed if they have information about the suspect; if the identity theft was used at a traffic stop or other law enforcement encounter; if your identity was used at one of those stops; the identity theft is related to a crime like domestic violence, drug crime, stalking, burglary or robbery; or if a credit or a debtor is insisting is insisting on the client getting a police report. They will want to go, make a police report, take a copy of the FTC report, their government-issued ID, proof of address, and proof of the theft. Make sure to advise them to get a copy of the police report and the police report number. Next slide. You can get additional guidance when you open up a free account identitytheft.gov. The account helps you to keep track of the progress as you navigate your clients the way through recovery. When your client establishes an account, they'll get a personalized recovery plan with a checklist. The site generates the prefilled letters and forms that they need in order to mitigate the damage caused by the theft. Having this account can help save time and if it happens again. So you click the green button that says to create an account. Next slide, please. And this is an example of the simple personal recovery plan that someone would have. This one, this particular one, this was involving their bank account. When you click on the arrow on the end of each step of the plan, the site will accordion out to provide detailed advice about how to carry out that step. For example, here the system advises place a fraud alert on your credit reports. When a person clicks the arrow at the end of the line, they'll get links to each of the three credit bureaus. The system will also explain that a fraud alert is free, and it will make it harder for someone to open new accounts in their name. And it will also tell them that—it tells the person to keep and eye out and make sure that they get a letter from each credit bureau confirming that they have placed a fraud alert on the file. For each recovery step, the system is going to provide follow-ups and reminders. For example, for the next step, call Bank of America. Next slide, please. Here is a follow-up letter on the first step. The system will ask the person for the date they called. Fourteen days later, it will send a message asking if the person received a confirmation letter from the bank. If they haven't received a confirmation letter, our system will prompt them to send a follow-up letter to Bank of America, and you can see in this step that the system already has created that follow-up letter, prefilled with the information that the person has already provided. All a person has to do is review it, print it, and send it. Next slide. The system creates letters for people to send to credit reporting agencies, debt collectors, merchants and others to resolve theft, and here is an example of a follow-up letter to a lender where a fraudulent account was open in the victim's name. You'll see in the upper right-hand corner, the letter has the identitytheft.gov logo, showing that the person has reported the identity theft to the Federal Trade Commission, and in the lower left-hand corner, the letter lists the enclosures the person needs to send to speed the resolution of their claim. At identitytheft.gov, you'll also find out about credit freezes and fraud alerts. I want to go into some of the other resources that we have available to you that you can share with your client— Next slide, please. —because identity theft is an issue that has tremendous real impact on consumers, and these issues affect millions of people. We're fortunate that our job is to help. Chances are good that someone you know or someone you'll meet has been scammed. They may not talk about it, but the statistics do, and the truth is that sharing what we learn today can help protect someone who you know from scams. Awareness and education are the best defenses. So the FTC has made its resources available to download, including articles, PowerPoints, bookmarks, and activity sheets. You can print them to share with others. You're also able to order our publications, and they'll be sent to you in bulk for free. Plus, they're available in multiple languages. We have a campaign called Pass It On. The Pass It On campaign packet is available on our website, and in it, in this, it highlights certain scams that we're seeing today and some of the ones that we even talked about plus many others that you probably haven't thought about. It provides tips about each scam and identifies red flags and provides ways and tips that people can avoid these scams. They're great to share with anyone. Next slide, please. I also encourage you to visit consumer.ftc.gov and share this website with others. This is FTC's website for consumer information, and it provides consumer protection basics. At consumer.ftc.gov, you can learn more about getting and checking credit reports. There are also tips and information about scams and identity theft, and you can sign up for our blog to receive up-to-date information regarding new trends and our casework. Next slide, please. The FTC has made it easy for people to report scams and frauds and business practices at reportfraud.ftc.gov. When you go to reportfraud.ftc.gov, we ask that you first tell us what happened. After they answer a few questions and submit your report, you'll get a report number, and you can use that to update your report and also get tips on what to do next. If you provide your email, you'll get this information via email as well. By reporting to reportfraud.ftc.gov, you're helping FTC and our law enforcement partners build cases that stop scans and also alert others in the community about current fraud trends. Next slide, please. Okay. I believe Heather mentioned that we will be saving questions for the end of the presentation. So, if you wouldn't mind putting your questions in the Chat or jotting them down so we can ask towards the end, I'll go ahead and answer your questions that the time Heather has allotted. Next slide. And I thank you so much. Lisa? >>Ms. Lisa Schifferle: Thanks, Kelle, and hi, everyone. My name is Lisa Schifferle, and I'm a senior policy analyst in the CFPB's Office for Older Americans. Now that you've heard about identity theft, I'm going to cover the scams portion of the presentation, and we know the reports of scams and fraudulent practices have increased a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. So it's a really important time to talk about these issues. I'm going to share some trends, tips, and tools. I'll start by discussing scam trends that we're seeing, and then I'll share some tips on how to recognize and avoid scams, and finally, I'll share some tools that you can use to encourage scam prevention your communities. Next slide, please. So let's start with the trends. This slide gives you a big picture overview of scams and identity theft. This is thanks to our colleagues at the FTC, Kelle's organization, who put together the Sentinel Data Book of complaints from people all over the country who have filed reports with the FTC, State AGs, and other entities, and what this shows is the FTC received 4.7 million reports in 2020, and the top three types of reports were identity theft, which you just heard about, imposture scams, and online shopping. So I'm going to cover the imposter scams and a variety of other scams that we're seeing. At the bottom of the slide, you'll see that of all the people who did report frauds and scams, only 34 percent reported losing money to the fraud. So that's a good thing. We'd like to see that number get lower, but what we do know is that if you can recognize scams, then you're less likely to lose money to them, which is why it's so important that you all are here and so important that you share your knowledge about scams with people you know, whether it's clients or people in your family or community. Next slide, please. Now, this slide here shows some interesting data about older adults and scams. Again, this is from the FTC's consumer sentinel data, and it may not be what you expect. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, younger adults are actually more likely to report losing money to scams than older people. There's this stereotype of the poor older person who's always getting involved in scams, but actually, younger people report losing money to scams more often than older people. The thing to note on the right, though, is that when older adults do lose money, they reporter higher dollar losses than younger people. You'll see a median loss of $1,300 for people over age 80 compared to only $324 for people in their twenties. So you can see from this data why it's so critically important to focus on the issue of scams facing older adults. Now, in the next slide, you'll see some more interesting trends about age and fraud. Next slide, please. Thank you. Now, this slide shows trends about age and fraud, and the thick dark line represents people over age 60, whereas the thin lighter line represents younger people ages 20 to 59. And what they show is what different types of scams various age groups report. For example, young people are far more likely to report losing money to online shopping scams, you see how that thin line goes way out to 54 percent. They're also more likely to report losing money to investment scams and fake check scams. Older people, on the other hand, are more likely to lose money to tech support scams, lottery scams, and friend or family emergency scams compared to younger people. So it's important when we are trying to educate and stop scams and stop loss to scams that we recognize which scams are affecting which populations. Next slide, please. So what are the top scams affecting older adults? On this slide, you'll see they're romance scams, far and away number one, lottery scams, and then business and government impostures. Also notable are investment scams and tech support scams, and we're going to talk about those scams in the tips portion of the presentation, but first, I want to share a few more trends. On the next slide, you'll see some information about top payment methods and total amount paid. Next slide, please. And it's important that we look at payment methods because we know that if you pay a scammer by certain methods like wire transfer, gift card, or prepaid card, then you're much, much less likely to recover— >>Dr. Brown: Lisa, we can't hear you, if you're not aware. >>Ms. Schifferle: —money because those payment methods— >>Dr. Brown: Your mic has it's open, but all of a sudden— >>Ms. Schifferle: —don't have the same protections as— >>Dr. Brown: —we just stopped hearing your voice. >>Ms. Schifferle: —the credit cards do. Now, what you see on the left here in gray is what payment method people used when they lost money to scams, and then on the right, you'll see how much money they lost. So the good news for older adults is that they were far more likely to use credit cards, and the credit cards, like I said, have certain legal protections. So older adults who paid by credit cards lost only $44 million, but by contrast, even though very few use wire transfer—you see that at the second from the bottom—even though not that many paid by that method, they lost a lot of money, $112 million by that method. And bank transfers also resulted in a high dollar loss. So it's really important to let people know that these types of wire transfer services and those requests are often a red flag for a scam. Next slide, please. Now, the slides I discussed so far were based on FTC data. I want to share some of the CFPB complaint data, and the charts that I showed you so far, like I said, were FTC, but the CFPB collects a more limited volume of complaints related to consumer financial products and services like lenders, credit cards, and credit report. So what you'll see here is that the vast majority of complaints that we got from older adults at the CFPB related to money transfer services, 91 percent. But, again, it's important to note that that's in part because the CFPB doesn't handle complaints about scams across all products. So that's a large part of the reasons why so many of the complaints relate to this topic. Probably, a more notable statistic on this slide is the increase in the complaints from pre-pandemic. If you look at Q4 of 2019 until Q2 of 2021, in that time frame, there is an 85 percent increase in complaints about money transfer companies. Next slide, please. The CFPB is also taking a look at how our complaints vary based on census tract. Since we don't ask for race or socioeconomic status in our complaints, this census tract data helps us spot trends across different groups. For example, by looking at census tract data, we found that lower income and communities of color are more likely to submit complaints about credit reporting, identity theft, and delinquent servicing, whereas higher-income ZIP codes and majority-White communities were more likely to submit complaints about loan origination and loan servicing. Our data also found that consumers from neighborhoods with the highest share of Black residents were more likely to submit complaints per resident than other census tracts. In addition, complaints about loan originations increased by nearly 50 percent over the course of 2020, driven largely by mortgage complaints. So you can find out a lot more about this in our CFPB report on consumer complaints by demographics and census tract. Next slide, please. So now that we've laid out some of the scam trends for you, let's turn to some tips for spotting and avoiding scams with a focus on cyber scams and some of the top scams that I mentioned earlier. Now, during the COVID pandemic, we've all been doing a lot more online than ever before, and obviously, being online offers great conveniences, but it also comes with risks. So it's particularly important to be aware about cyber scams and let your clients and let others in your community know about these cyber scams. It's a good time to remember cyber basics, like using strong passwords and keeping your antivirus software up to date, and we also know, like I said before, that recognizing specific scams makes people less likely to lose money to them. So that's why we talk about specific scams, which I'm going to do now. On the next slide, you'll see the four scams that I'm going to focus on. Next slide, please. Good. That's good. Thank you. I'm going to talk about online dating scams, which is the scam with the highest dollar loss for older adults. People lose tens of thousands of dollars to these scams. I'm also going to talk about tech support scams, which while they're not necessarily huge dollar losses for some people, it's one of the most commonly reported scam by older adults. And then we'll talk about mortgage closing scams and investment scams, both of which may be particularly harmful to adults who may be at risk of losing their homes or for older adults losing retirement savings right when they need it the most. And if someone doesn't have a home or savings, these are also good tips to pass along to children, grandchildren, or others in the community. So let's start with online dating scams. These happen when you meet someone online—next slide, please—maybe through a dating app or maybe through a regular social media platform, and they start with what seems to be a relationship. But then they ask for money. Usually, they're for a medical procedure or for travel to visit you, and they often want you to wire the money or send it by a prepaid car, or they want access to your bank account. And, again, as we saw before, if people wire money, they're much more likely to lose the money, or sending it on a gift cad is another way that you're very likely to lose the money and not be able to get it back. So, if you know someone who's been involved in a romance scam—and these are very prevalent—you probably understand that these scams pull on people's heartstrings, and it can be particularly difficult to convince a friend or a family member that it is, in fact, a scam. In fact, at a recent Senate hearing, there was testimony from someone who was a victim of one of these scams, and it kind of showed how it really could happen to anyone. She talked about how she was on a common social media platform, and she got a friend request from someone who liked dogs and gardening like her. And then they started connecting her with their kids, which pulled on her heartstrings since she had never had her own kids, and that the daughter then started asking money for feminine products saying she was embarrassed to ask her dad, and they asked her to pay on gift card. And this woman did that to try to help out the children, and then other requests for gift cards started. When she was supposed to visit—when he was supposed to visit her, she got a call saying he was held up because someone put drugs in his bags, and she was told to send $20,000. That's when she realized that there was something wrong here. Unfortunately, at that point, she had already spent a huge chunk of her husband's insurance money. Her husband had passed away sometime earlier, and she not only lost a lot of money, but she lost the life that she thought she was going to have. So that's just an example to show how people can get involved in these scams. So next slide, please. So what are some ways to recognize one of these scams? The big tip-off is that the love interest is asking for money for an emergency or for travel. Also, like I said before, it's important to think about how they're asking you to pay. If they're asking for wire transfers, prepaid cards, gift cards, that's a red flag. Also, if they want access to your bank account or credit cards or want to set up a joint account very quickly, that's a red flag. To protect against online dating scams, we recommend people share these tips first. Don't send money or give access to your accounts to someone you have not met in person, even if you have started an online relationship or what seems to be an online relationship. It's also good to limit what personal information you share with a new love and what personal information you share online. That's good for a lot of identity theft purposes as well, but any information you share online, people may be able to get, and then scammers can make their stories more believable by looking at your social media. Next slide, please. For those of you who want to spread the word about online dating scams, the CFPB offers this fraud prevention handout, which can be found at consumerfinance.gov/placemats. We offer a variety of these free fraud prevention placemats, handouts, and activity sheets on a bunch of different common scams. They were originally designed to be used by mail delivery programs like Meals on Wheels, but they are so popular that now they are being used by a community or faith-based organizations, and you can hand them out at libraries. If you give community presentations, these are great to order for free in English and in Spanish and pass out at your presentation. Next slide. So let's talk about tech supports scams. Romance scams were the biggest dollar loss for older adults, but tech support scams are one of the most commonly reported scams by older adults. Tech support scams, if you're not familiar with them, it can happen if somebody calls and they say, "This is tech support calling." They may use the name of a reputable company, but they're just spoofing that. And they say they need to remote into your computer to fix viruses that they're seeing, or sometimes you'll just get a popup on your computer telling you to call tech support or telling you to click on a link because you have viruses or your computer is frozen. Next slide, please. So, to guard against tech support scams, we recommend that people pass on these tips. First, don't give control of your computer to someone who calls you out of the blue. That is most likely a scammer. Legitimate tech supports don't just call you out of the blue saying, "We found viruses, and I want to remote into your computer." You have to call them. Also, don't click on links in unsolicited popups or emails. They can download malware, which can then take information from your computer, and also, as Kelle mentioned earlier, it's important to keep your antivirus and antimalware software up to date in order to help guard against these scams. You can set your antivirus to auto-update, if you don't want to have to worry about remembering when and how to update it. So that's a tip that people could try, but the main thing is don't let people remote into your computer, and don't go buying gift cards to pay for a tech support. Sometimes they'll even ask for Apple gift cards if you're on an Apple computer to make it seem more believable, but if you're asked to buy gift cards for tech support services, that's a scam. Next slide, please. So, as part of the placemat series that I described earlier, we created this placemat for Cybersecurity Awareness Month last year, and it goes over some of the very basic cybersecurity tips like lock your devices and use strong passwords, meaning at least 12 characters, a mix of upper case and lower case. Also, limit what personal information you share online, and know the red flags of scams like we're talking about today in terms of it's a red flag if they are asking you to pay by a wire transfer or by gift card. Again, limit what personal information you share online and think about checking your privacy settings on social media. Next slide. Next, I want to talk about investment scams, and these are scams that can affect people across all income levels. Scammers sometimes take advantage of trust and inexperience in investments, and they also wreak havoc with savvy investors. And this doesn't have to mean investing in a multimillion-dollar company. It could be a coin collection, or it could be a work-from-home-type investment. Next slide, please. So how do these investment scams work? Scammers might ask you to put all your money into what they say is a no-risk investment, or they may take your money and say, "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it." Recently, you heard about a woman who was investing in coins, as her father had done for many years, and then the coins ended up to be not what they had been represented to her as. So they were not really worth anything. Sometimes it's even someone from your neighborhood or your community or faith group that you naturally trust, and then they take advantage of that trust. Or you might learn about a supposed financial advisor through a phishing scam. So what can you do about investment scams? On the next slide, you'll see some red flags to recognize these investment scams. Next slide, please. Thanks. So some red flags are if someone is pressuring you to act quickly before it's too late, that's a big red flag for a lot of scams. Scammers want to get you in a hurry and get you off your game so that you're just rushed into making a decision. So don't let anyone hurry you. Take your time. And if they claim that their results are guaranteed or no risk and say leave it all to them, that's another big red flag. Also, if they won't explain their payment structure, maybe there's something in it for them, and if they ask you to put all your money in one investment, if you think about the old adage, don't put all your eggs in one basket, that's pretty good advice generally here too. To avoid investment scams, again, don't let anyone rush you. Also, you can check the background of a brokerage firm or investment advisor at finra.org before using them. It's also good to ask any potential financial advisor what your recourse is if you have a problem and how they were paid. Like, do they get a share if you invest in certain products, or do they get a salary that's not affected by what you invest in? You want someone—you want to use someone who's financial advice is not directly affected by their pay structure. Next slide, please. The next scam I want to talk about is mortgage closing scams, and these can happen when you're buying a new home. Maybe for older adults, it might include downsizing and retirement, or for younger people, it could be buying their first home, or it can also happen when you're refinancing your current home, maybe to age in place or just to get a lower mortgage when rates go down. So here's what we know. On the next slide, you'll see some additional information, and scammers are basically taking advantage of homebuyers during the closing process, and through a sophisticated phishing scam, what they do is they try to divert your closing costs and down payment into a fraudulent account by confirming or suggesting last-minute changes to your wiring instructions, and they often make it look like the email is coming from your agent or settlement attorney. So it will be the day before closing, and you'll get an urgent message saying, "There's a change in plans. Wire your money here instead." So that's a big red flag. If you get anything like that, you need to investigate it further because these scams are very complex, and they often appear legitimate. The ultimate cost for many people could be life savings because, for most of us, the house is the biggest investment we will ever make. Next slide. So here's some red flags for these mortgage closing scams. Of course, if you get a call or email with last-minute changes to wiring instructions, that's a huge red flag, especially if they ask you for financial information by phone or email. If this happens, call back your agent or settlement attorney at the number you know to be correct to verify any changes before you send any money. As a safeguard, we recommend talking to two people about the closing process; for example, your realtor and your settlement agents so that you can make sure that you aren't being diverted to a phony person. Also, the CFPB has a Mortgage Closing Checklist that can walk you through the steps to take, but the most important thing is to call to verify instructions before wiring the money, and don't call the number they're giving you. Call the number you know to be correct for your real estate agent or settlement attorney. So what should you do if this happens to you? First, contact your bank or wire transfer company immediately and ask for a wire recall. Reporting the error as soon as possible can increase the likelihood you'll be able to recover the money. Also, you can find a complaint with the FBI at IC3.gov. So this is a really important one for you to share knowledge about this type of scam with people you know so that they don't get into the situation. Next slide. So we've covered some trends. We've covered some tips. Now I'm going to give you some tools. Next slide, please. These are tools that you can use in your community to share your knowledge about scams and to help other people in your community prevent scams. One of our flagship programs it the Money Smart for Older Adults program, and it's an awareness program that the CFPB developed with the FDIC. It focuses on preventing elder financial exploitation. It's designed as a train the trainer program. So we have the resource guide that you see here that you can hand out to participants, and then we also have an instructor guide which gives you a PowerPoint that you can use and gives you a whole guide about how to use all the materials, including some activities you can use to teach people about scams. So this is a great one to check out if you do want to give presentations in your community. Next slide. We also have a series of guides on topics of interest to older consumers and people who work with them on things like reverse mortgages, choosing financial advisors, and pension lump-sum offers. You can find these in all the materials that I mentioned at consumerfinance.gov/olderamericans, and oftentimes knowing legitimate sources of financial help can help you avoid scams as well. On the next slide, you'll see consumerfinance.gov/coronavirus. Now, Heather talked about this at the beginning, but I want to reiterate it because, in addition to all the great things that Heather mentioned, it includes information about scams and, in particular, COVID-related scams like vaccine scams and government imposters. On the next slide, you'll see it also includes information and links to our rental assistance finder. Next slide, please. The CFPB recently launched a new rental assistance finder, which helps you locate and contact organizations that can give money for COVID-related shortfalls for rent, past-due utility and moving expenses. So what you can do is you can go in and select your State or Territory or Tribal area if you're on Tribal lands, and then it will give you links to where you can get rental assistance help. Next slide. We also have a lot of great videos in English and in Spanish on housing insecurity, how to save your home if it's going to foreclosure or steps you can take to try to save it as well as rental assistance money. On the next slide, you'll see where to report fraud and identity theft. Next slide, please. So you heard these from Kelle. There's reportfraud.ftc.gov and identitytheft.gov, and if you have a problem with a consumer financial product or service, you report it to the CFPB and consumerfinance.gov/complaint. On the last slide, you'll see information about how to get all of our resources as well as an email address to contact us, and with that, we will take your questions. >>Dr. Brown: Thank you so much, Lisa. That was a great presentation, and also, thank you, Kelle. Both were super informative, and it seems like every year, there's new material. I mean, I think we're really going to have to do these yearly because so many new things keep popping up that weren't there before. So we appreciate you sharing this with us, and for those that have asked, yes, we will send a copy of this slide deck out to every person that registered with their email when they came to the webinar. And we're going to try to get some questions answered here. Kelle, I'm not sure if you had a chance to see if there were any questions in there that you wanted to answer. >>Ms. Slaughter: I did, but I'd like to piggyback on one thing that you said first that I did not mention during the presentation, and that is one more new thing that would be able to help advocates as they're assisting the community with issues regarding identity theft and scams. Last month, the FTC shared a new resources to help you to report to the FTC, your clients' experiences with fraud, scams, and bad business practices. It's called the Community Advocate Center. We know that communities thrive when we work together. We also know that scammers target specific populations, including people of color, speakers of other languages, and low-income communities like Lisa mentioned. When advocates tell us people stories through reportfraud.ftc.gov, FTC can give tailored advice in next steps, including specific information about how to recover their money. So we have launched this new resource, and you can sign up for Community Advocate Center, and when you do join, you'll be joining colleagues from Legal Services Corporation, National Legal Aid and Defense Association. So you can sign up, and you can sign up at reportfraud.ftc.gov/community. You'll be able to have that as another resource. But from the chat, I was asked can you tell us where to find the Pass It On materials that I mentioned. Absolutely. We have a website, consumer.ftc.gov, that houses all of our resources for education, and specifically for the Pass It On campaign, I have posted in the chat, how you can get directly to those resources. On this particular page, you're able to select whatever language you want, whatever topic you want, what kind of format you want it in, if you want to have a bookmark or if you want to have an activity sheet that you're doing with a community or outreach event. Those materials are there for you to print off. You can put your logo on it, and you can circulate it to whomever you would like to. >>Dr. Brown: That's great. >>Ms. Slaughter: There's another question—I'm sorry. >>Dr. Brown: Thank you. >>Ms. Slaughter: You're welcome. There was another question in the chat asking if there was any method to report repeated calls that do not respond to blocking or reporting using normal ways because they use a different number at each call. Well, in an effort to reduce the number of calls that you're receiving, there are several things that you can do, but there's not one cure-all. I personally utilize a combination of these, but as I mentioned before, you can register all of your telephone numbers at donotcall.gov. You can use the call-blocking feature built into your cell phones, and then the last thing that—no, there's a couple. You can report these phone numbers to FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov, and remember when you do that, we use this information. And we share this information with other law enforcement agencies to develop ways to address this issue, which might include some law enforcement action. I know that also there is a site with the Better Business Bureau called Scam Tracker, and they keep track of those phone numbers as well. So, if you report it to law enforcement, we're trying our best to work on it, and the best thing to do is that if you see something or you're experiencing something, say something on your behalf as well as your client. >>Dr. Brown: Okay. Thank you so much. >>Ms. Slaughter: There's an easy way to report—okay. >>Dr. Brown: I'm sorry. There's a delay, Kelle. >>Ms. Slaughter: Okay. I apologize. >>Dr. Brown: No, no. You don't have to apologize. It sounds like you have other questions you wanted to answer. >>Ms. Slaughter: There was another question that just popped up in the chat. I don't know if I'm missing a couple before that, but I'll continue to scan. Is there an easy way to report attempts to scam without one actually taking the bait? Okay. Easy way to report attempts to scam without one actually taking the bait. I'm not quite clear about the last portion of that question, but I'm going to attempt to answer this for what I think that you're asking. Yes. Reportfraud.ftc.gov. You don't have to fall for these scams in order to report it to us. We want to know about it whether you've lost money or whether you were smart enough to say, "You know what? This is a scam," and then hang up. We want to know if you got midway through the conversation and this is the phone number they called you from or this is the email address that they were using. Whether you lost money or not, report it to us. >>Ms. Schifferle: And this is Lisa. I see a couple of questions that relate to my portion of the presentation. One person asked, do you have tips for talking to people who may be a victim of a romance scam when they're in denial? And that's a great question. As I mentioned, this is probably the scam where people are most likely to be in denial, which is why people can lose so much money to is, because they think the relationship is real, and the scammers spend a lot of time and energy building up the relationship so that it does seem real. I think a couple things that you can do are, first, to hand them some of the material from the CFPB or FTC about romance scams. We have those fraud prevention placemats at CFPB. We also have Money Smart for Older Adults, and FTC has Pass It On. Sometimes when someone sees that material from the government or maybe an article you see in AARP or otherwise, then it may help you start a discussion saying, "Look, this is happening to other people. Do you think maybe what's going on with you could be like this?" and letting them know that a lot of people have lost money to similar situations may make them realize, even if they don't admit it right away, that this is what's going on with them. So those are a few things to try. I also saw someone—a couple people had questions about what should they do with credit issues if something is on their credit report that they don't think should be on there or that they want to dispute. I mean, first, you should dispute with a credit reporting agency—Equifax, Experion, or TransUnion—and then if you do not get the relief that you think you should, then you can file a complaint with the CFPB at consumerfinance.gov/complaint. And when we get complaints, we do reach out to the relevant company, whether it's a lender or a credit reporting agency, and try to get some sort of resolution. Usually, we get a response in 10 to 14 days. So we would suggest that, again, first, reach out to the company that's involved, and then if that doesn't work, reach out to the CFPB at consumerfinance.gov/complaint. And I see also a lot of good tips in here. Someone said that they used IC3 and were able to get the money back, and the key was putting all the data within the first 72 hours after the wire was released. That makes sense to me. I mean, with these wire transfers, usually, the only hope you have, both getting the money back, is if you report it very, very soon after. Here's a question. Are there criminal charges pursued after a consumer files an identity theft report? I have many clients that have family members stealing their identity, and they're afraid to report them because it is familial theft. Well, I can start to answer that, and then Kelle may have things to add to it. I mean, part of the beauty of an identity theft report is you can do it online at identitytheft.gov. You don't necessarily have to then file a police report, depending on the type of identity theft involved. So that you could send your identity theft report to the credit reporting agency and clean up your credit without having to risk law enforcement against a family member if it's a family member who stole your identity and you don't want to press charges against them. Of course, there are instances when people will want to press charges against their family members if they've ruined their credit and stolen their identity. But the identity theft report itself does not necessarily lead to police investigation. The identity theft report can be done at identitytheft.gov and sent to credit reporting agencies directly. I don't know if you want to add to that, Kelle. >>Ms. Slaughter: Well said. Yeah, Lisa, you're absolutely correct on that. If the debt is not yours, it's appearing on your credit report, go to identitytheft.gov. Walk through the steps, and go ahead and dispute the action. If you find out who it is and you want to identify that person in order for them to—in order for action to be taken, in that instance, as I mentioned, you may need to make a report to the police department because you know who the suspect is. You know who it is that used the information, but otherwise, you are able to go ahead and dispute the information that was opened in your name on your credit report. >>Dr. Brown: Thank you, ladies. I did see a tip from Sherry [phonetic] that said people were exchanging the QR codes on restaurant menus with things that have information or grab information from your phone. So, obviously, we want to be careful about what QR codes we scan with our phone, and I appreciate her reminding people of that tip. We had a question from Quenette [phonetic] about who do you contact if you have concerns that something is not accurate, you can't remember if it's accurate, regarding what is on your credit report. Again, if you have a dispute on your credit report, you can go to CFPB's website and search for credit dispute letters, and you can get some examples of dispute letters there to send a letter to the credit bureau disputing what's there. But if you can't remember, you're not sure, you probably want to look around and find some evidence of what happens. Go back and check the bank account online to see if it was something you did spend on your credit account. Try to come up with something because, ultimately, you're probably going to need it. Some people believe in just disputing things they're not sure about. They'll take them off immediately while they're researching it, but they will usually show back up if they find that it's factual. So it make take some effort. So it's better to try to come up with some documentation. And there's another question that talks—somebody is asking about—they said they talked with their son's friend who is in cybersecurity, and he recommends not using malware, antivirus on Mac products. And we can't really comment on that. I have also heard that Mac products are pretty stable. I also heard one of the best ways to avoid getting a virus is, of course, not downloading anything that you're not familiar with and not searching websites and cutting and pasting things. Even some graphics have things attached to them, but in the end, I think it's best to check with some experts on that. But I've heard similar things. Somebody else said they would—James said he would never write money. Proper closings are done in person at a title company or lawyer's office. I think it is important to be careful. I was really glad to hear that someone was able to recover some. I've heard other horrible stories of people losing, you know, in the millions because of a closing. It was really bad a couple years back, but a lot of promotional campaigns have come out about that. So people, they're aware. So, if someone calls you the day of closing or right before and changes, you just don't take their word. You call the agent yourself at the number you have, not some number somebody gave you, and check on that. Let me see if I missed anything else here. We have so many good comments from people. We appreciate all of it. I can't really see anything else that I missed. I may have—oh, somebody mentioned that they paid off a mortgage. It doesn't show on their credit report, and the bank closed. Hopefully, you can find some written evidence along the way. You should have received your deed or something. I would suggest going to a lawyer to talk about that because they can do all kinds of title searches and look at public records, and legal aid groups are really good with that. So, if you can't find someone, we do have lists of some on our website. You can email my cfpb_finex.gov, and I can at least refer you to the site to find an attorney to help you with that issue. That's awful if that's the case. I'm sorry you're experiencing that. All right. We will be sending out the slides. So I'm going to get ready to wrap up here. We have 3 minutes. Thank you all for coming and being so participatory. We are posting—there was a link post to a survey, a post-event survey. It might pop up again if you want to try to take it. There it is. Thank you so much, Robin, and a special thanks to Robin and Susan for handling all the events in the background. It's a lot of work, and they really help us stay on track. Thank you again to our speakers for sharing their wisdom and so much good information to keep us up to date on how to keep our clients and ourselves safe for that matter. For those of you that didn't provide your email and don't care to, you will be able to get a copy of the video recording and the webinar which will be on our website after the holiday season. So feel free to grab it at this link. We do have some past webinars on identity theft and scams that are there now if you need something immediately, and also, the next webinar will be in February. There will be no CFPB FinEx webinar in January. With that, I'd like to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season, and we appreciate you coming to this, and we look forward to having you at the webinar in February. So watch your email. If you didn't get an email notification for this webinar, please go to our Financial Practitioner webpage and join our list so you'll get future emails about webinars as they come up, and you can also send an email to cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov and ask to join the mailing list if you did not get a notification. Take care. We thank you so much for all the kind words and appreciation for this webinar. So, Lisa and Robin and Susan and, of course, our guest from the FTC, Kelle, we all appreciate you very much. We're going to leave the chat open for a few minutes just so people can capture that link if they want. I'll also email out that survey link with the slides when they get sent. Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful holiday.