Cyber-Safe Seniors: How to Protect Your Identity, Money & Peace of Mind

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w fourcy dot com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and life, as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now, let's join your hosts, Banita Bell Anderson as together we start with Asking Good Questions.

1:01 Hey, hello, and welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast. Today, I am dressed in black to you know, I don't know, just be kind of in the mood for the topic today. We're going to be talking about identity theft and cybersecurity and a whole bunch of things that I am very concerned about making sure that you are up to speed on and you know what is up. I was actually talking to a daughter and a granddaughter earlier this morning, and my daughter was saying, Hey, you know, scam likely calls me all the time, and I said, you know what, Rachel, Scam likely calls me all the time too. So today we're going to get some answers on how to deal with those types of things. So I'd like to invite Robert.

1:51 If I say this name correct, I want to say Italian Ceciliano. He can correct me. How am I doing? Robert? Did I butcher your last name? I was perfect? Did it good? I just want to go to Italia and the CID. It just sounds like you should be from Cyprus or. Something sicily sicily Yes. Well. Robert is a cyber security expert duh. He's a private investigator, he's a certified speaking professional, and he is the CEO of protect Now, LLC. And he is one of the nation's top trusted voices on cybercrime and identity theft.

2:38 He's built this fantastic network and he's appeared on over five hundred television shows. He's a fierce advocate for personal and professional security, and he even has a certification program and he's the best selling author who strips away technical jargon so that you know, people can understand. Nobody does anything unless they understand and have, you know, some direction on how to do it right, right, So you want to add anything to that. Robert, No, that was great, thank you. Well, uh so tell me where you're coming from. I'm in Boston, Massachusetts, so just you know, yeah, yeah, and so everybody knows I have never ever poketaka in Havid yad ever. Yeah, no, I've had a wicked little bits in Fenway Park though.

3:33 I really am okay, all right, I've unleashed a monster. So, Robert, we have some really important stuff, and I want this to be something where people take it serious and then go forward with some actions that they can take today so that they're safer because scam likely is calling me, and if they're called me and my daughter, I'm sure they're calling everybody else too. Yeah, that's so funny, scal like like it's called a I D. That's good. Yeah. So well, you're known as you know, like you know what I was saying, You're known as that as an expert in this. How in the world did you get into this kind of work?

4:18 Oh, I've been involved in personal security since I was twelve. I was mugged in downtown Boston on I was a kid. I was with my little brother and five kids approached and they took our money, and that like kind of messed my head up a little bit, right, And that was like when I was twelve. And when I was thirteen, I was at summer camp and I met a young girl and you know, back then and we're talking like, you know, forty plus years ago, kids didn't really know what like sex was, right, But she said to me one day after camp, She's like, I think you should know that my mother's boyfriend raped me. And I was like, I looked at her face and I was like, I, you know, I don't know what to say. I don't what to do. And I go home and I say to my dad, Dad, what is rape? Because it had no idea what she was talking about, but I just knew it was bad by the way she said it.

5:05 So from that point on, once you explained to me, right, dealing with my own multiple attack situation, what she'd gone through, personal protection became a primary focus of me at an early age. It just did. I mean, from that point on, I just started to consume everything that I could on the topic, on the issue. And then by like the mid nineties, I had my first computer, Like in nineteen ninety five, I had an IBM PS one consultant, which is like Windows three point zero with a one hundred and fifty megabyte hard drive. I was like one of the first people that I knew online, you know. And then early into that my computer got hacked. In the nineties, I suffered thousands of dollars in credit card fraud. And from that point on, I was like, personal security became something more than physical security. It became information security, it became identity theft, right, And this is in the mid nineties.

6:01 So by nine to eleven I had been entrenched in personal protection, and right after nine to eleven I went full time with this. You know, I'd been in the trades prior to that. But after nine to eleven, like everything that I had been saying now at this point for close to a decade or more, began to resonate and make a lot of sense. And that time I have seen the evolution of cybercrime and personal protection at a level that like, it's just kind of out of control for most people, and most people don't know what to do, how to react to how to respond. But I do, and I provide that level of basic intelligence to my audience so that they are informed. And once you are for warned, you are for armed. And really, most of this stuff is pretty easy as long as you do the basics, understanding and recognizing risk as a matter of kind of taking it to heart, making sense of all of it, and doing something about it.

7:05 Yeah, well, what you know going forward? What is it that words you the most? You know, I've been saying to my audience for thirty years. Listen, with all of this stuff that I talk about, don't worry about any of it, just do something about it. However, However, in the past year or two, with AI and deep fakes and voice cloning, I'm a bit worried, and I think that we should worry a little bit due to the fact that human beings are completely incapable of telling real from fake. When it comes to these fakes, the audio clones. Forget about it. There is nothing that you can do to prevent that. You can't really determine what's rail or fake, and then as far as the video clones you know, face overlay and so forth. The technology is there right now to perfect you know, basically video, but it's not readily available to the public. It's there, it's just not consumable when that is deployed, when it becomes available to everybody, to the masses, that's what it's going to be really difficult. So right now, the basic thing that you're supposed to do is kind of look at every single incoming call, email and phone call and deduce, Okay, what is happening here? Is this railer fake? What is the motivation on the person on the other end, Is my loved one really distressed or at issue? Or is

8:35 this really an investment scheme or fraud? And so on? Like you really have to be critical in you're thinking going forward? Yeah are you? I'm just thinking if anybody's asking you to do anything on a phone call or an email, yeah you should do it. Exactly what you're saying, yeah, don't. Yeah. It really boils down to basic common sense like is your is your is your grandson really being kidnapped? Is your daughter really being kidnapped? Like all of these ruses and scams are designed to get your blood pressure up, They're designed to freak you out. There's some urgency to all of them. And then the other side of it is like some of them are revolve around loneliness, you know, getting your your your emotions all involved. Like if you're just paying attention, then you really shouldn't get scammed. It's kind of interesting and fascinating what they do and how they do it. But in the end, like we with life experience should be able to tell right from wrong.

9:38 Yeah, right, Well, what would you say to someone who says, oh, this is scaring the crap out of me. I'm not techie. They're they're embarrassed about their tech skills. What would you say to somebody? Would you say, go back to what you just said about being aware and thinking about what is this relief? Maybe tech skills doesn't have anything to do with it. Well, the good news is first, the presentations that I deliver when I'm in front of a live audience, I don't speak tech. I don't do any technical jargon. Right, My presentations are jogging free and I just speak like you know, normal, like you and I having a conversation okay, and I don't provide any advice that would require any technical skills either. It's all basic one O one stuff like if you know how to log into email, if you know how to post an update to say Facebook, if you know how to send a text message. Like, that's all the basic administration that you need to know to do the majority of the cybersecurity stuff that you need to to make sure that the bad guys look at you as a tougher target. So it's all actually really simple. You don't have to be really even tech savvy or like some type of an engineer of sorts.

10:53 You just have to use common sense and use your basic skills. It's like if you know how to bake a cake, then you know how to you know, follow a recipe and get all the ingredients with all the recipe and put it all together. Well, that's all security is. This is just a matter of following certain processes and engaging in certain habits. And once you do all these different things regularly, creating these habits, then again you've become a tougher target. It really is as simple as that, right, So, Robert, you turn. Yourself into the typical scammer from the criminal's point of view, walk us through a typical scam, so we understand how how they think and how they operate.

11:39 So all the inbound communications email, phone, text, even in person. Right, bad guys have access to technology to scale their operations in such a way where they can send out millions of emails, millions of text messages, make millions of phone calls like simultaneously, right, and AI allows them to do that. And then once we react and respond, We respond to that text message, we respond to the phone call, we respond to the email. The idea behind all of those responses is that you now are engaging the criminal in such a way where you're saying things and putting words into texts and so forth that allow for a response, whatever that response might be, okay. So what they're looking for is for you to not know immediately that that inbound phone call, email, or text is a scam. So, for example, all of those wrong number of text messages that you get, they're all scams, every single one of them are a scam. But I got one yesterday this said like happy New Year, Robert, I hope you are doing well. I wish you a prosperous year. And then that was it, and then I looked at the phone number and I couldn't find it online. I looked it up in my email as somebody who I might have been in contact with and could have been in my email.

12:56 I didn't know who it was, so I didn't respond to it, and I just deleted it because they didn't identify themselves. They said my name, certainly, but the phone number was not showing up anywhere in the web or in my inbox or on my phone either, So it was a scam. But they knew my name. But all I did was, ultimately, after the research, just delete the thing. I didn't respond with who's this, I'm sorry, I don't have you on my car. I didn't do any of that stuff. I just did my own research to find out do I know this person? And apparently I don't, so it's a scam. Now, if that person really was somebody that I knew, they would have shown up somewhere. They would have made more of an effort. They would have responded back to me and said, hey, this is this and so and so, But they didn't. It was just a robo text. Same thing with email. When the inbound email comes in, if it's of an urgent nature, if it's asking for financial information, if it's a threat of some sort, I'm going to do a research on the email address, on the person who is corresponding with anything about that communication that I may be able to deduce if it's actually my bank or my financial institution, or a colleague and so forth. And after a period of time, like you start to look at these inbound communications and go, you know what, I don't even need to do any research on that text message. I don't need to do any research on that email because I've done all that before. You know what it is. It's just fraud, it's just scams. I don't need to deal with any of this stuff. I'm just gonna hit delete.

14:26 And so once you become savvy to that stuff by you know, doing the basics, working the research at the beginning of like trying to figure these things out, then you start to see a pattern. And the pattern is is they're all fraud, they're all scams, it's all bs, and it's just a waste of your time in the end to even do any of the research or administration on it. The best thing to do really is just to hit the lead. There's one instance that you just made me think of where somebody's calling you and they're trying to get you to answer yes. Because this scared the crap out of me because it was like, well, if they can get you get your voice saying yes, then they can record that and then use it in a different way.

15:13 Yeah. So voice biometrics, where banks might use that information to identify or authentic get their clients and so forth, in some ways has been and can be compromised. However, the companies that provide these technologies are getting better at determining rail and fake. They're getting better at determining recordings and so forth. And even though that is an issue, I don't know like how popular it is or how widespread it is. I've never received one of those phone calls. I know it's a thing. I do know that if I don't recognize the phone number, then I'm going to let it go to voicemail. And when I do get various phone calls from whoever it might be, I'm very cognizant and cautious to react to respond verbally in any way before I have a really good sense on whether or not it's rail or fake. The majority of the time, it's just fake. You know. So when you're getting those phone calls, when you're getting those those inbound communications, I say, the majority of the time, just let it go to voicemail, you know, just let it go to voicemail. Like, if your bank really needs you, they're going to find the way to get in touch with you, probably through the US postal right. Right.

16:21 Well, and also every time that there's been something about my bank, I just call the bank, Call the bank. Yeah, bypass all that, bypass all those inbounds. Yeah. One hundred percent of the time, there's no issue with my account. It's just fine. And so yeah, so that would be another high level thing to remember to do is just call you know, if it's a grand call your daughter, call call a family member and find out, you know, what's going on with the family member. Call the bank, call whatever. So that's you know, the best thing to do. So here's what a lot of this boils down to. Right, So, the majority of the people that are you know, watching, listening and so forth, all of our lives ever since we were little, ever since we were kids, right, watching TV, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, reading magazines. You know, Think think Time Magazine, New York Times, CNN, you know, MSNBC, Fox News, Wall Street Journal. Right, think of all the TV shows we've watched, all the news programs we've watched, We've all the books we've read. We've been consuming media our entire lives. We talked on the phone earl as kids for years. Loved talking on the phone. It was the greatest thing. Ever, then we've got cell phones, all this stuff. Now we've got text message, Now, we've got social media. Now we've got like just we're just bombarded with all kinds of stuff, and we're being bombarded with fake news too. Okay, so all of us are of our lives, we've learned and grown to trust all this

17:55 incoming stuff, all this incoming media, Okay. And so with dozens and dozens of years of trusting inbound communications, consuming all this trustworthy information, we still to a degree trust media. Right. When I say media, I mean like you know, phone calls, emails, video, audio, like you know, TV, radio, podcast extreming, social the written word, you know, online, We still to a degree trust that stuff, and we want to and we kind of need to to a certain degree. But I think that we're at a point now where I think all of us need to kind of like step back, and if you're not reading it in the New York Times, if you're not reading it in the Wall Street Journal, if you're not reading it in Time magazine, if it's not actually on CNN or Fox News for that matter, if it's not actually on a trusted news source, if it's just via phone call, email tech, then you can't just automatically believe it.

19:04 You can't just automatically trust this inbound media. You need to really like kind of take a step back and go, yeah, not everything is worthy of my trust any longer. My mother used to say to me when I was growing up, believe nothing of what you hear in half of what you see, And today you might believe almost nothing of what you hear and nothing of what you see. To a degree like you kind of need to like really kick back and just you know. And we could spend hours and days talking about a thousand different scams and what they look like and how they operate and what the motivation is, But in the end, I don't know that any of that really matters. I think what really matters the most is you just need to kind of stop what you're doing and think about, like, Okay, what is this actually trying to get me to do? What is really going on here? What is this inbound request really mean to me? And if I engage in it, what's the negative outcome? As much as it might upset me that my grandson is is at risk, or my daughter is kidnapped, or my bank account's been compromised, is that really happening? Is that really a thing? You know?

20:13 What's the likelihood of that really being the case? And the answer is now, I really don't think your daughter is being kidnapped, or your son's you know, been arrested, or your bank account's been com I don't think that any of that's really happening. Well, let's wrap up. So so those so everybody's familiar with this sort of thing. So what would you say would be the top three red flags? The top that would instantly instantly make them you know, because what we're what we're talking about is we're talking about changing people's how they react. I guess right, what we're doing is you and I are trying to help people react in a different way so they change their behavior so they're safer.

20:58 Red flags Yeah. So, first and foremost, anytime there's any urgency at all at all, that's probably fraud. Anytime someone's life is at risk, someone's account is at risk, your money's at risk, that's pretty much one hundred percent of the time fraud, any urgency whatsoever, Okay, anytime there's any finances involved anytime, right, Like, I do not make large financial decisions without the guidance of my financial service professional. I do not invest in crypto or make stock purchases or move money unless I talk to either or both my accountant or my financial service professional, and I know what I'm doing, but they know what they're doing. Okay, So I'm not going to invest in crypto based on a text message or an email for someone it as goofy as that sounds. I have come face to face with people who have done that and have lost six and seven figures. Well, Robert, this keeps happening, so it must be profitable for the scammers. Yeah, of course, Yeah, it keeps happening because we as a species, by default, trust and we want to believe in our

22:31 fellow human even if they're digital and thousands of miles away, or we've never met them, or it's over the phone or even over a video from afar. We just want to in need to trust others. That is our inherent want in need. It's more normal to trust others than it is to not trust others. Not trusting others goes against our core beliefs. Do you understand that we want to in need to trust as an in dependent species, Not trusting is not normal. We fight against not trusting. We always give the benefit of the doubt, or too much for that matter. And when you understand that core concept, then not trusting automatically anytime there's money involved, anytime there's urgency involved, then if you understand those three core things, really you should be good.

23:27 Yeah. So okay, so probably we're going to change gears here a little bit. Let's talk about passwords because I know for my clients that has been something that has just driven people crazy and many people reuse. In fact, I was going through my security on Google Drive the other day. Many people reuse the same password everywhere. How big of a risk is that? Really? Okay, what's a realistic pass word strategy? So this is about as technical as we're going to get. Okay, Okay, password management really is a pretty simple process. It's a really simple strategy, Okay, And it's simple. Think of it like this, right, Like I got a mobile phone. You got a mobile phone. I don't know my mother's phone number.

24:18 I don't know my father's phone number. Right. I never really committed it to memory, never had to, because this thing did it for me, right, Okay. So, just like your mobile phone or your your your phone book or contact manager, whatever you want to call it, your contact list, a password manager is just a software program that you download an install onto your computer. It works with your browser, whatever your browser is is, whether it's Chrome or Firefox or Edge or Safari. Right. Apple has their own proprietary password manager this. If you search the term password manager, there's hundreds of them out there, there's probably about a dozen that are really good. Right. Just search password manage your on Google and you'll find all kinds of options. Well, what if the password manager gets hacked? Not worried about that.

25:08 The password manager companies are security companies with bank level, military grade encryption. I'm not worried about the password managers getting hacked. Okay. That being said, once you download this password manager, it's just like using any other software program. Microsoft Word or anything else that you might use. Right, you get to understand how it works, right, and what it does is is it automatically creates passwords for you uppercase lowercase numbers and characters, write long, strong passwords that you're never going to have to remember. And then when you visit a website like Bank of America, Let's say you create this pass code, you change up the Bank of America pass code, you plug it into Bank of America, and then once you do that, the password manager says, okay, do you want me to remember the Bank of America password?

25:57 And you're like, of course I do, and then it saves it for you. So next time you want to log into Bank of America, you go back to your password manager. You just hit Bank of America and the password manager and it takes you directly to Bankofamerica. Dot Com goes to the login page plugs and you use a name plugs in your passcode and you get to go. It's as simple as that. Like any other software program, there's a bit of a learning curve, but once you spend the time with it, right, you get to know it, and it's like anything else you know, you become better at it. Over time, it becomes a part of your life as you spend time with it. And I've been using a password manager now for twenty plus years. I would say for the twenty bucks a year that I spend on it, it is absolutely the best use of my time and my money when it comes to my security.

26:42 Yeah, yeah, really that's probably use a password manager, whatever that is for you. Yeah, that's probably the best idea of the whole episode. Is easy and simple and like. And here's the problem with passwords. And you you already alluded to this. Ninety plus percent of us, all of us, ninety plus percent are using the same pass code across multiple accounts. And here's the danger in that, even if it's a good, strong passcode, here's the danger in that, there are on average about twenty five hundred data breaches every single year in the US. That means, you know, in ten years, that's about twenty five thousand and thirty data thirty thousand data breaches. That equates to about one hundred and seventy five billion compromise networks in the past, in the past what fifteen twenty years, one hundred and seventy five billion compromised records, so.

27:45 Your information being out there is probably very likely. It is out there. Okay, I've had criminal hackers email me my social security number and go hey, security guy. Hey, you go haha, just to flex their muscles to show me how cool they are, right, and I don't even care why because they have something called a credit freeze, and a credit freeze is a tool that you get for free through the credit bureaus that locks down your credit report. So getting a credit freeze makes my social security number useless to a thief. Getting a password manager and changing up your passwords makes your existing passwords useless to a thief. And on top of that, you set up two factor authentication. And two factor authentication is when you log in, say to Facebook, with your username and your passcode. Then you get a one time text message to your phone. That one time text is that second factor.

28:36 Your phone beam at second factor and that one really you. Yes, it's really me exactly. Yeah. So credit freeze is to protect your identity. Go to experience TransUnion and Equifax, right search credit Freeze via Google Right Credit Freeze, TransUnion Credit Freeze, Equifax Credit Freeze Experience and you'll find the page on each of the bureaus site to freeze your credit. Once you do that, you protect your identity. Search password manager in Google and you'll find all kinds of articles to talk about the top ten password managers. Download one of them, play with it, and spend some time with it, and before you know it, you're going to be an expert at it. Right, and then search PayPal two factor authentication, Gmail, two factor authentication, AOL two factor authentication, And by doing that search, you're going to find a link on AOL or Yahoo or PayPal that shows you how to set up two factor authentication for that particular website. And once you do that, now you've got your passwords all locked down. You've got two factor authentication to like a backstop watching you back to protect you on all the various sites. And by getting a credit freeze, you protect your identity.

29:53 Yeah. Well, you know there's another one that I thought of. There's all these variations, right, and this is we're on a trip. So we're on a trip, crosscut road, trip stop at a gas station, get some gas. About thirty seconds after leaving the gas station, we're getting a message from like Capital one that someone had stolen our credit card information at the gas pump. Okay, and so. Is that I mean one of the most common ways that identities are being stolen, would that be one of them is stealing credit card information and some random way out there.

30:39 So let's back up a little bit. For your identity to be stolen, we're talking about your identity, your personal identifying information. Which is different from the credit card different. So your identity is your name, your address, your phone number, it's kind of your email address, and it's your social Security numbers, those five major things, right, and so for your identity to be stolen, that generally starts with your social Security number, and from there they open up new lines of credit using your name, maybe a different address, maybe different phone number. But a stolen identity starts with the social and then either your name or a variation of your name, either your address or a variation of your address, and so forth. Okay, to prevent a stolen identity, that's where credit freeze comes into place. Okay, Okay, credit cards different animal altogether. Now, if a bad guy wants to open up a new, brand new credit card under your name, a new line of credit from a bank that you've never done business with, the credit card you've never had before. Then they would need to steal your identity, and they get your social and they open up a new line of credit, a new credit card makes sense.

31:49 So just because just because they get the information on the credit card. Doesn't necessarily that's just credit card fraud, is what that is. Okay. So if you are if you're using your card at the gas station and five minutes later your card's being compromised, that's credit card fraud. That's not even identity theft, okay, it's just credit card fraud. And the way that you deal with credit card fraud is first and foremost, I don't worry about credit card fraud, meaning like it's not even a concern of mine. Right, if my credit card is compromised, if somebody uses it without my authorization, well what do I have to do? What are my options?

32:31 I just refute the unauthorized charge and it goes away. There's zero liability for me. So credit card fraud is easily remedied or mitigated by just simply calling the credit card company and saying that wasn't me refusing the charge, okay. And the way you do that is you monitor your statements. Now, the best way to monitor your credit card charges in real time is by setting up pushed ontification of push alerts, which means that either on the app on your phone get you get like a notification, a push notification, a pop up that says, hey, there's been some activity on your card. Now if I just use my credit card, I'm going to get a pop up that says, hey, you just use your credit card. I'm like, I know, because I just did. But if I get a notification that it was used at three o'clock in the morning at a gas station that I haven't been at, well, then I'm going to wake up the next morning and I'm going to see that. I'm going to call the credit card company and go, hey, that wasn't me. So you set up push notifications through your mobile apps and at the credit card company or bank's website. Just log into your menu and you'll see the notification settings or security settings, and you check every box. You're aware of all your charges as they occur. Right, that's it. You're making a bud.

34:00 Yeah, well, I know. It's scared the crap out of a lot of people. Scared the crap out of my husband. Holy cow, he was just like so yeah, so it's good to put it's it's like, it's good to put this stuff in context too. Yeah. Yeah, credit card fraud is a non issue. Like I'm not concerned about my credit cards being compromised. Have they been compromised? Yeah, And I'll do is make a phone call and it's done. It's no problem. I don't worry about where it happened, who did it, how much they spent. I don't care, like just it makes no difference to me. It's a it's it's a it's just a simple fact of life. Well. Uh, social media is where most grandparents connect with their family. Yeah, but it can also connect a lot of uh, you know, expose a lot of personal information. What are your top tips for I mean, I whenever I see something about, oh I'm going on a trip or whatever, is like, tell people you're going on a trip. What are your tips for social media for the older crown?

35:04 So I don't know that it's necessary to share as much as the majority of the people that share do. Yeah, I agree. I just don't see a reason to share your location, the fact that you're traveling. I don't know that it's necessary to post your whereabouts, the fact that you've left the house. I I just don't know that providing the intelligence that a bad guy could use against you is a good idea. There's something called security through obscurity, and security through obscurity basically means that by basically like kind of hiding certain things, by making certain things obscure in a way, you're kind of protecting them, you know. And so by hiding location data by not revealing so much information, I mean, you wouldn't you wouldn't post your social security number on Facebook? No, So why are we posting where we are or where we aren't or all of this other ancillary data that can be compiled and used to identify, locate, compromise a password, Like, I just don't know that it's necessary.

36:26 Just because others are doing it doesn't mean that you should too. You know, There's and then there's that, and then there's one that I have been especially concerned about with my granddaughters using social media, and that's the whole romance scam thing that can be just downright heartbreaking because there's all kinds of things that that can lead into. But what patterns do you see there? And how can leved ones intervene if they see something crazy going on. Yeah, here's how this works. This is pretty simple actually, So we as human beings, by default, we experience you know, like, for example, we experience hunger pains. You know, like if you're hungry, your body is designed to create an urgency within your body to find in forage for food. It's been like that for thousands and thousands and thousands of years as part of our evolution. Okay, well, loneliness, right is there. It's been there for thousands and thousands of years, right for evolution. And they call it the pain and the ache of loneliness, no different than hunger pains. So like, if you are, say solo, right, and you're at a certain point or age in your life, whatever it might be, and you begin to feel those pains and ache of loneliness, what does it do? It directs you and guides you towards finding companionship. Because we are social, interactive, interdependent creatures.

38:03 We need each other for our survival, okay, for appropriation. So loneliness is natural and it's normal, right, And on average, about twenty five percent of all humans experience loneliness on a regular basis. Twenty five percent, you know, I've been married now for you know, twenty five plus years. I really haven't experienced loneliness myself since I was in my early twenties, right, But I know that like married couples often experience loneliness, you know, in their marriage, like it's a normal thing, you know that. All that being said, when we are experiencing loneliness and we're contacted by someone or we reach out and they reach back digitally via text, via email, via phone, right, there is a high likelihood that if you are experiencing the pain and ache of loneliness and the person you are communicating with begins to soothe that pain in ache, and your focus now becomes that person. That if that relationship was created virtually and you don't truly know this person, you've truly met this person, you truly don't really have a reason to trust this person because you have no formal relationship, like you haven't you don't know them. They're like, they're not a person that is a friend of a friend, and they're not a person that you actually spent time with in the physical world. These are all red flags, okay. And and

39:36 even though the pain and the ache of loneliness is beginning is beginning to dissipate because you are now are this relationship that doesn't necessarily mean you're in a relationship with somebody who actually has your best intentions. Yeah, So when I when I talk to banks and credit unions all the time, they tell me, like, there isn't a day or a week that goes by that they don't have clients that come into the bank that are why hiring thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to somebody overseas because they think that they are in an actual romantic relationship with this person. And sometimes that same person comes in month after month after month, and the bank employees say to that person, this is a scam, like you're not actually in a real relationship with this person.

40:20 Have you ever actually met them? And in the employ the bank client says, I don't care. I don't care, And why don't they care because they're not lonely. They don't even care about the money. They don't care about the money. They're just not lonely anymore, and that's all that matters to them, you see what I mean. So it's important that we as friends and family of somebody who could potentially be lonely. We intervene, interact, engage and find out what's going on, have a certain say over their finances. Maybe like just provide them like the social interaction that they might need to find somebody locally right under.

41:06 This is a problem for people who have lost their spouse, older people who are going through a massive adjustment. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. It's awful. I have a good friend who you know, he's a colleague of money. He's a financial advisor. And his dad died in his like mid sixties, and so like his mom retired widow, you know, like after about a year, Like he's at her house, you know, with the grandkids and they're just like having a Sunday dinner or whatever. And he sees his mom's laptop like on the on the counter, and it kind of like is like kind of going through it just to kind of like check on her a little bit. And he sees like she's on Facebook. He seems like she's on match dot com.

41:49 And he's he kind of got like a little upset, you know, because like his dad had died and everything. He's like, Mom, what are you doing? And she's like I'm an adult, Like I feel lonely sometimes I just want to, like, you know, meet somebody. And he's like right or right, his you know, his mother kind of gave him a lashing and all. And then he calls me like three months later, he's like, dude, I got a problem. He's like, my mother apparently like she met this guy on Facebook who like was a colonel in the army, and apparently like he found it like like a big trunk of money and like one of those spider holes in a house that they invaded. He's like, and and my mom like was in this relationship with this guy and he and he needed my mother's help to get the money out of Afghanistan. Oh jeez, how much money do you think that she wired overseas?

42:35 Oh? Did she really? How much do you think? Oh? I don't know, I hope not more than a couple thousand. How much does she do? Two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars? Oh? Okay, this is a friend of mine. I mean he threw up when this happened. He physically threw up. He was ill for days. She was upset, more so because she didn't want to believe that the guy that she was in a relationship was actually a fraud, and there was her son had a hard time explaining to her that this is fraud, Like she didn't want to believe it. Yeah, and but but like what happened to her is kind of perfectly natural and normal. It's not okay, it's not good, but that's like what we do. But like we are capable of understanding this, and we're capable of intervening early on.

43:31 We're capable of like engaging in vulnerable loved ones that might like be in a situation. So it's it's important that like we recognize this about certain people in our lives and we kind of like do what's necessary. And then you know, and then might be situations where you can't just do you just can't do anything. They're just gonna do what they're gonna do. And that's that like this, sometimes you just can't, but sometimes you can. And and you know, two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars, you know, I think I might have done a little bit more. Well, Robert, as we suspected, our time is gone.

44:11 I know, there's so much to talk about as we wrap up. What's your biggest message of hope. How can people move from fear and anxiety about scams to feeling empowered and protected? Well, first and foremost, if you're listening to this, if you're watching this, share this which as many people as possible. Okay, knock some sentence to some of the people that need a little more sensibility and common sense. Right, and then every time the phone rings, be suspect, every time you get an email, every time you get a text message, look at that and go, yeah, I don't think so, really, you know, do the basics. Get a credit freeze to protect your identity, set up push notifications fear credit cards.

44:57 Set up two factor authentication for all your critical websites. Right, set up push notifications for your credit cands. If I can't already say that, right, password manager, and you should be good. Do those basic things like you you're good, not even yeah, you're good. Yeah. Well, I do feel like this is important enough to bring it to the forefront. We're probably going to have another conversation because I want I want this to be an ongoing conversation, because I think people get complacent and I think people need to be, you know, having a check as to what their behavior is every day. Yeah, So, thank you so much, Robert.

45:43 This is automatically trust don't automatically trusty? Yes, don't you would? Common sense? Yes you should, common sense be smart thinking about all of those different things. If you and like, if you're a senior and your spouse has died, go to the Senior Citizens Center, go to the YMCA. Go someplace where you can connect with people. Not online, not online, no, no, nope, God Go to the library. Sign up for every library within a fifty mile radius of where you live, and go to all the They all offer free classes, free seminars, free free things.

46:25 Go to every single one of them and meet people, socialize, get out of the house, right right, Okay. Robert, love you. Thank you so much for joining me today. This has been awesome and hopefully we have had you ask some good questions about your own personal behavior in this area. So thank you so much for joining the Ask Good Questions Podcast. Thank you. Today's episode is over, but we did ask good questions again, they didn't. I don't miss out as we broadcast live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w fourcy dot com. Joined Vanina Bellen. We're sing next week for more conversations with experts on finances, retirement, behavioral finance issues, health and wellness, and more. Until then, remember to ask good questions.