Keeping Your Finances and Identity Safe This Holiday Season

k l a a s Financial dot com. Their telephone number six oh eight four four two five six three seven. No charge for the initial get to know you appointment tech Coss Financial. It will be complementary to you again their number six oh eight four four two five six three seven and joining us this morning from Coss Financial, our retirement planning professionals, CJ. Coss and Malia Quavis CJ. How you doing this morning?

a fantastic feature of the program this week. No exception of a chance to win a twenty five dollars gift card to Best Buy from our friends at Coss Financial. Little tip for the class quiz question leak most of the time, just about every time both the question and answer to the class quiz questionally come up during the program, so definitely benefits to play. Pay close attention to the show mentioned as well the website colssfinancial dot com. I

mentioned the weekly Market Pulse newsletter. I didn't mention. If you miss any part of today's program or want to listen back to the shows, you can actually listen to the podcast right online at clossfinancial dot com. This week, we're going to talk about with the holiday season upon us, fraud, big thing things you can do to help prevent potential fraud. Really important tips ahead on this week's program and before

we start talking about that topic. Let's actually take a look back Maliah last week's program and look at the clas quiz question week get the question and answer there as well.

to that show. Our question revolved around rmds true or false if you were born in nineteen sixty or after your RMD age is currently set for age seventy five. The answer to that question was true, and Dennis I. WannaKey was our first correct answer for calling in last week, so congratulations to him. Listen carefully to today's show.

available to you at klossfinancial dot com. This week, of course, we'll be talking about as we look towards the holiday season, a lot of folks start spending more money around the holidays, and of course you want to keep track of money, and of course money in and out of your accounts, also things like credit cards, some changes there, maybe a note something that I didn't make that. So today we're actually going to be talking about some great tips to help potential fraud, aren't we CJ.

and being part of that that category. So we spend a lot of time working with individuals helping them plan for their retirement. And while we're not trying to scare anyone, we truly do want people to be aware of how they can protect themselves. So, believe it or not, in our line of work being retirement planning, financial planners, investment advisors,

fraud shows up. It shows up in the form of people calling us and saying, hey, I need money out of my account to get the lottery winnings out of the vault, and we go say what, Or I need money out because I need to go buy some some gift cards because my child is in jail and Ghana and we say what. So you get the idea not to mention, you know, fraudulent access to account all of this. So that is the topic we're going to be discussing today. So let's begin with online safety for our listeners. This

begins with robust password practices. Strong passwords really are your first line of a good defense. A secure password should combine uppercase and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters, avoid personal information like names or birthdays, birthdates, and use unique passwords for every account. This will prevent a breach in one account from compromising others. So listen, I am part of a household. I have teenage daughters and a

ten year old son. I have a spouse. I know just how easy it is to use the same replica over and over and over, especially if you say, well, gosh, I can't remember all the unique ones, so I'll just do three or four or five different variations. Listen, I've heard it all. I've seen it all. And what I can say to you is, don't go down the easy paths of using the same replicas, or of using really easy user names and passwords, or of saying I'll just write it down on my desk on a piece of paper.

Don't do it. Instead, If if you're willing to be humble and listen to this, we're going to give you some steps where you can use unique you use unique user names of passwords, but still have it be secure and have it be something that you can access and remember. So stick with us here. So again, an uppercase lowercase number, special characters, don't use any consistency, don't use birthdays and names, and believe it or not, here's a fun little fact

for you. The most common passwords that are used are one two three four one one one one one one uh The most one of the most common passwords is password. Another one is admin one two three or zero zero zero zero zero zero zero. Don't do that. Don't do that, and people go, oh, don't worry, I don't, I just use my data birth don't do that either, right, make it completely unique, something that if you relied on your brain,

you never be able to remember. Okay, and we're going to talk about how you're going to gain access to that because you might be going, well, how do you do that? If it's completely unique? I would never remember. We'll get to that in a moment.

that you can download that generates a unique code. This could also be your cell phone that you get a text message text to you so that when you're logging in, it just texts you if it's a if it's unknown, IP address huge fans of multi factor authentication that just by that feature alone, you will dramatically reduce the likelihood of somebody fraudulently accessing your account, because, as you can imagine, if somebody accidentally gets old of that information and you

don't have it multi factor authentication, boom, they're into your account. But if instead you say, well, gosh, I have these unique things going on, but I accidentally shared it with the wrong person, or I put it on whatever, you dramatically reduce probability of them getting in there if a text message has to come to you. Okay, so I've been hinting at this. We do understand that managing multiple passwords and user names that are all unique can be overwhelming,

which is where a password manager comes in handy. Now, I just want to address because I've heard this from innumerable clients and friends and family members. But SoJ, can you really say to me that your solution for managing passwords is to put them online? Yes? Yes, and I know that sounds crazy, but the answer is yes. Otherwise your solution is what to put it in your purse, to put it in your desk, to put it in a little black folder that anybody can go grab and steal,

at which point you lose them all. There are professional password storage managers that have military level encryption. Listen. The military uses these, the federal government uses these. That are password storage managers that are very secure that require like six different ways. There are six different layers of security to get into them. Some of them would be like one password. I noticed during the last I think it was a maybe it's the World Cup or some sort

of football game that they were referencing one password. But one password is a great one. It's actually one that we use here at Class Financial. Another one is nord pass or dash Lane, and there's many others. Do your research, find one with military grade encryption on it, get very involved in understanding how it works, and then use that password storage manager. So listen. Everybody I personally, between business and family, have upwards of one hundred different completely unique

user names and passwords. I would never be able to remember those. If I was relying on my brain, I would not have much uniqueness to it at all. But because I have one password, I can generate those, I can save those, and then any time I go to the site, I can just go in and you might go, what do you mean one password? One password is the name of the technology. I need one password to access my plethora of unique usernames and passwords gaining acts to that.

Access to that requires a lot of security. So do your due diligence and get involved in that. But I just cannot suggest to you enough. We see so much problem in the way that our clients, our family and friends are handling user names and passwords. We just can't suggest the U. Really do your due diligence and set something up that's more secure.

let's talk about then protecting your identity. And excuse me, Maleia, I apologize protecting your identity and why now it's such an important thing compared maybe with years previous.

People are still buying these. People are writing their passwords in them, and you know what, they put them in their purse if they're you know, the ladies, or their backpacks or and I'm like, no, we cannot go backwards because that is just not going to be a good situation. So, you know, we talk about everyone when we have these

conversations with our clients. This is what we hear. They say, Well, I'm sharp, I'm not going to respond to anything that's emailed to me if I don't know where it's coming from. We're going to get into that in a minute. Everyone believes that they won't be the person that actually has fraud committed against them, and that's where we're like, actually, it can happen at any point. I'll tell you a

personal story. My daughter noticed. This was last year. She noticed that she had two charges on her checking account that did not belong to her. They were very small charges from Google for about three dollars four dollars, and she reported to the bank right away. They said, oh, it's nothing to worry about, you know, we'll we'll let you know if there's an issue. Well, two days later, day four, they had taken the fraudsters had taken ten

thousand dollars out of her checking account. She called the bank back and fortunately after two months they did say, oh, yeah, it was our fault. We should have we should have done something more about that when you first reported it, but they had to prove that it was fraudulent. That's how fast these things can happen. You might click on something you may have totally had nothing to do with it. We just want you to be on top of everything

you're doing. And again, as CG said, in the holiday season, we get wrapped up in other things and it's harder to keep track. So what we're going to suggest here for many people is, look, get restricting your access to your credit. So what we would suggest is you consider putting a credit freeze on your credit and what that does is a credit freeze stops identity thieves from opening

accounts in your name. It doesn't affect your ability to use existing credit cards, so whatever you have will totally be fine, but it requires lifting the freeze when applying for new credits. So let's say my credit is frozen, I decide I'm going to go buy a car. They run my credit, they're showing a block on it. I'm like, oh, yeah, I have to unfreeze my credit for them to see my credit. But what it stops people from doing is

opening up accounts in your name unbeknownst to you. And that is the rude rude awakening when you find out someone's tried to take a mortgage out in your name, or they've tried to take out multiple credit lines, which is not going to be easy for you to fix. So you can freeze or unfreeze your credits fairly simple and it's actually free. You can do that through the three major credit reporting agencies. You can go to Equifax, Experience,

and TransUnion. You can go individually to them, you can do it online, or you could also call them on the phone. Now they of course, they of course have situations where they will sell you a membership. You don't even need to do that. You can actually do it for free at each of those locations. So, with regards to identity theft prevention, some key steps to include believe

it or not. Protect your Social Security number. If people have your social your date of birth, and your name, they can do a lot of damage with that, so you need to keep that number secure. Use the strong pass for passwords that CJ was talking about with multi factor authentication. Regularly review your credit reports. Again, if you freeze your credit, that's a great thing. Or if you don't freeze your credit, you should at least be taking advantage of checking your credit annually. You can go to

annualcreditreport dot com. You can actually download your credit reports for free and make sure there's no accounts on there that you don't recognize. Again, freezing your credit. The next one is shredding sensitive documents and limiting. So we'll start with that shredding sensitive documents. A lot of people still have paper coming into their household with statements. We would recommend once you see that ShredIt, if you need another copy of it, you can reach out to, you know,

the institution that that that came in from. But there's so much sensitive information on documents you might receive in your house. Limit what you share on social media. A lot of people like to play those games. It says what's your favorite color or what's your where'd you go to high school? All this will believe me, all the information is being taken in by people that you don't want to have taken it in and they could use it against you. And then identity protection services, we'll talk

about this in a minute. There's LifeLock and there's considerations there if you should or should not use it. You can also go to credit Karma credit karma dot com again another free service. They will try to, you know, sign you up for other things, but it's actually a free service where you can monitor the credit usage on a daily basis. So we just want you to you know, while you maybe can't prevent identity theft, maybe you can slow it down if you're more aware.

two five six three seven. No charge for that initial get to Know your appointment tech Loss Financial. It will be comp entry to you again. Their number six oh eight four four two five six three seven ooks into our conversation with CJ and Malia. We'll talk more with them about protecting your credit and some other options out there when it comes to monitoring your credit. We'll get those details next as Money in Motion with Class Financial continues right here on thirteen ten. L wu Iba talking

with our retirement planning professionals CJ. Colss and Malia Quavis. Of course they come to us from COLSS Financial. I hope you've had a chance to check out the website. If not, head on over Cossfinancial dot com. That's Class k l a A S Financial dot Com and they're telephon number for the office right here in Madison. Six

oh eight four four two five six three seven. No charge for that initial gets to Know your appointment tech Loss Financial it will be complimentary to you again the number six oh eight four four two, five, six three seven. Talking this week, of course, with the holidays, a lot of us taking out that credit card and spending, and of course sometimes you get those those bills at the end of the month. You're kind of going through and

trying to see, hey, what's going on there. We're talking about preventing and protecting yourself when it comes to things like fraud and those areas. And had some great, great information just before the break about some of the tools out there that you can use. And so what if you say, you know, you want to monitor your own credit CJ. Are there some options out there for folks.

for now. One would be Annual Credit Report dot Com offers free yearly credit reports, and then credit Karma dot Com provides daily monitoring and actually credit report services I think the only difference there is I think credit Karma's is not technically your credit score. It's more of a credit it's a credit like estimate. But you know, I'll hold up my hand. I use credit karma dot com. They will actually send me an email if my social Security number or data birth are ever used to open

up credit anywhere. And I've tested this by the way. I've opened up a new credit card and literally immediately while the credit card was being opened up, I got an email and a notice from Credit Card I saying, you know, alert Alert. So there's some really cool tools there. But Malia just mentioned previously, we would be a big fan of actually freezing your credit. If you don't need your credit open, just shut her down, right Dan, you go, you know what, but it's going to hurt my ability

to use my credit card. No, no, no no no. Anything that's currently open you can continue to use. But if you just want to freeze your credit, then nobody can use your data birth and social Security number to open anything up, which is a great option that exists out there, but kind of changing changing focuses here. We would also really suggest that you'd be alert to phishing and spoofing in your emails. My goodness, gracious, I personally am just flabbergasted by how much of an increase there

has been in this regard in the line. I'll call it two years.

Just click here and reconnect your online Office three sixty five. Right, And it's got kind of like a Microsoft logo on it and comes in an email, and you just go, oh, oh, okay, well I have at Microsoft Office three sixty five. Just click and I'll just re enter my username and password. The problem is you're not going to the right site. That's a phishing scam. Often you're not going to the

right website. You're clicking on the hyperlink that takes you to a spoofing site that you then enter use and name and password. They've now got access to your Office three sixty five license so phishing attacks can be carried out through email or text messages. The attacker may pretend to be from a very well known company such as a bank, internet service provider, or mortgage company. The message may create a sense of urgency, such as like threatening

account suspension or job loss or money loss. And the attacker may also include a link to a malicious website that contains malware. So I'll again using me as a simple example of this, I probably get two of these a week, no joke between text and email. I get two of these a week, and often it contains the urgency. I get voicemails with literally human beings who are leaving voicemails saying we've been trying to get a hold of you, and since we're not getting a hold of you, we

are shutting down your bank accounts. Now you need to call us back like it's crazy, y'all. So you just really need to be careful. And then spoofing is a cyber crime. I'm where a person or entity impersonates a legitimate source to gain access to a personal information, money, or data. So spoofing can take many forms, such as let's say that you just throw away a letter in your trash from your bank, right, it's just a statement. You throw it away. And somebody sees that CJ. Closs

has a bank account at I don't know. I'm going to use a you know, a gimmicky one XYZ bank. Well they can just send me an email saying I am the manager from x y Z bank and you've lost you're using him and password needs to be reset. Click here and enter. You're just re enter. You're using hime and password for XYZ bank. Do you realize how easy that is? So anyway, I need to call myself down. You can sense my urgency here. It is really stuff that you need to be careful about.

a trusted company or a government agency. And then text message spoofing, which is also known as smishing. This is when a text message appears to be from a legitimate source. So you get the idea, everybody, man, these are getting creative. We would just say to you, you're gonna have to risk not responding to a legitimate source by you know, in terms of protecting your own credit in your own situation.

So we would we would prefer that a family member ends up calling you going why did you not respond to my text message? Then to end up in a situation where you have months and months and months of having to recover your credit.

If you missed any part of today's show where you want to share today's program with family members, please do that. Head on over to Classfinancial dot com. That's closs k l a A S Financial dot com. You can listen and subscribe to the podcast right there online telephone number six oh eight four four two five six three seven. Don't forget no charge for that initial gets know you appointment tech co Loss Financial. It will be complimentary to you again their numbers six oh eight four four two

five six three seven. Talking about some of the modern takes on h on trying to take advantage of folks when it comes to their credit, also some old fashioned ways. We'll get some details on that. We'll do the class quiz question ly week next. As Money in Motion continues right here on thirteen ten WIBI. This says money in motion with COSS Financial as mentioned the website colssfinancial dot com.

That's Coss k l Aasfinancial dot com. They're telephon number six O eight four four two five six three seven. It's a great time a year all who doesn't love this time a year? Problem is, you can sometimes be put in a compromising situation when it comes to fraud and your credit and your financial information, very very important stuff.

As we talked this morning with CJ and Malia from Class Financial, and we were talking about some of the more high tech stuff things like emails and spoofing caller ID, there are some low tech ways as well that folks are being victimized and things like mailbox mailbox fraud. That is something that really goes on. What can folks do, Malia to protect themselves there?

Shred those, or as my client the other day said, I just burn everything that comes through the door. It's like, okay, burn. But a few simple steps to help you out with regards to your mailbox. Never, never, never leave mail sitting in your box for too long if you're heading out of town, put a hold on your mail through USPS, USPS, or ask a trusted neighbor to pick it up for you. Second, consider switching to a locking mailbox for extra protection, or even use a PO box for important mail. So, as

I said, shred sensitive documents. And then finally consider we're a big proponent of this. Finally, consider receiving all your financial statements online versus in the mail. This really really has cut down I believe a lot of that mailbox fraud by people who have switched to an electronic intake of their sensitive financial information. A couple more things I want to add here too, for you, is back to

talking about checking on your credit card statements. You really need to be doing this quite frequently, at least monthly, because I know what happens sometimes again during the holidays, is we kind of kind of glanced, but we don't really pay attention. And there is a time limit for you to be able to argue charges that are on credit cards. So if you see a charge you do not recognize, it's best to notify your credit card company

within that first thirty days. And then finally, you know, we're talking about this phishing FYI that spelled pH not FI for all of you fishermen out there. Phishing is with a pH. But you want to be careful about anything you click on. If you get a text and you click on. I just had a client unfortunately do this. They clicked on a text. It gave them a phone number, as supposedly was from Apple. They called the phone number, and they had just gotten a new computer. They called

the phone number. They unfortunately gave out personal identifiable information and the fraudster and this happened two weeks ago. The fraudster took out twenty thousand dollars direct from their bank account. And so of course the person feels horrible that they gave all this information out. But I'll tell you age. You know, it doesn't matter what age you are. A simple click a simple phone call to what you believe is a legitimate source that was not recoverable money, and

it was it was the client's fault. But I'm just telling you that's why CJ and I are like, please please control what you have because someone out there is trying to, you know, take it from you.

oh eight four four two five sixty three seven. You're also going to hold on to that telephone number because it's time now for the Class Quiz Question the Week. It works like this and just a moment, I'll ask you the class Quiz question the Week with then if third minutes from the today's program, to call the Class Financial office right here in Madison at six oh eight four four two five six three seven first Gart correct answer when this week's prize for say twenty five dollars

gift card to best Buy. This week's class quiz question the week is this It's true or false? True or false. Putting a credit freeze on your account prevents identity thieves from opening accounts in your name. Telephone number six oh eight four four two five six three seven first Gart correct answer when the twenty five dollars gift card to best Buy. And again that's Class Financial's office right here in Madison. No charge that Ania gets to know you

apployment at Colss Financial. It will be complimentary to you again their number six oh eight four four two five six three seven C J. Malia. It's always great chatting with you guys. Have a fantastic couple of weeks. Of course, next week is Thanksgiving you guys. Enjoy time with your family and look forward to doing it all again real soon.