Tom Kaminski (00:00)
Welcome back to the Sandwich Bread Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Kaminsky. Back by popular demand, we have Danny Schwartze of Your Cyber Life. Once again, we're talking
This time we're focusing specifically on aging parents and elders and the practical steps families can take to protect them. This episode builds on our last conversation with a few important adjustments for a very different audience. Let's get into it.
Tom Kaminski (00:21)
All right. Welcome everybody back to another episode of the Sandwich Break podcast. I'm your host, Tom Kaminski. I'm back again by popular demand. Danny Schwartz, CEO of Your Cyber Life. He scared us with the last episode and for this episode, we're going to mix things up and he's just going to scare us again.
Danny - YourCyberLife (00:35)
You
Yes, just keep it consistent.
Tom Kaminski (00:41)
Good. No, as mentioned in the prior episode, and I certainly think you should give it a listen if you have not, we went through some fundamentals of protecting yourself from cyber crime, just the basics, basically things to think about and implement in your life. And he gave us, was it seven strategies? Seven, it was like tips and strategies to safeguard your family. There's more than seven. That's a spoiler, but
seven really good ideas to start to build sort of a moat, shield around your life. And at the end of that episode, Dan and I discussed doing a second episode specific to elders. So this could be an aging parent or just an elder in your life where you want to protect them, safeguard them from cyber crime. it will, this episode will be similar, quite similar to the prior episode, but
There's going to be some tweaks and adjustments ⁓ that really are more tailored toward that unique audience. So Danny, welcome back.
Danny - YourCyberLife (01:37)
Yeah, glad to be here.
Tom Kaminski (01:39)
Alright man, so maybe let's do the abridge like brief background. Reintroduce yourself for the new listeners because we're adding like 100,000 listeners with each episode. It's totally overwhelming. No, I'm just kidding. But maybe give us a little quick rundown of your background again and then we'll dive into it.
Danny - YourCyberLife (01:43)
Yeah, sure.
easily.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, appreciate it. before starting this company, I was with Schwab for about 20 years, working with financial advisors on all things technology and a big conversation with all of that was cybersecurity.
So our goal in building kind of our solution was to help advisors and their clients. And one of the catalysts for me was I was the victim of identity theft a number of years ago and I some family members become the victim of cyber crime. that of drove me to build education and resources again, both for advisors as well as their clients.
Tom Kaminski (02:24)
love it. Awesome. I appreciate you offering your background on this and the product you've, you're the CEO of your cyber life is really interesting. And I think fills a pretty huge need in our industry, which is continuous education and staying on top of cyber for both advisors and advisors clients. So it's really interesting stuff. All right. So without further ado, we're going to dive right into
tactics, strategies to safeguard the elders in your life or yourself. let's be clear, these are perfectly applicable to your own personal situation, but things that we should be thinking about sort of piggyback the last episode. So what do we have as number one, Danny?
Danny - YourCyberLife (03:06)
Yeah, so kinda jumping into it, and again, this probably applies, again, both to maybe elderly folks or yourself, is a credit freeze. So there's a bit of a pro-con with a credit freeze, but the pro side, it prevents criminals from opening up new lines of credit in your name. So simple examples of that would be opening up maybe credit cards, car loans, or mortgages. And the nice thing about credit freezes now is they're free and they last indefinitely. So really the only con
to it would be having to plan ahead a little bit. say if you're opening up a new credit card for example, you have to plan ahead because you'll actually have to request a temporary lift on your credit freeze, then you'll also have to remember the logins and passwords to all of the three credit agencies. But overall, it's still one of the best lines of defense against identity theft.
Tom Kaminski (03:55)
like that. Yeah, it's honestly not that inconvenient. For someone like myself, we open a new credit card more than every few years, it usually boils down to you purchase a car and they need to do a comprehensive credit check on that and things like that.
Danny - YourCyberLife (04:06)
Yep. Exactly. Or refining the mortgage
or something like that. It's kind of these events that do happen, but they're not super frequent.
Tom Kaminski (04:12)
Yeah.
And then I don't know if this is like the best practice, but you can, when you lift those credit freezes, you can set a clock on it to reestablish it. And so you, you lift it for four days during the window on the running the credit, and then you're going to have to think about re refreezing the accounts. just automatically happens. So not terribly inconvenient, but I think terribly valuable when it comes to protecting yourself.
Danny - YourCyberLife (04:21)
Thank you.
Nope. Yeah, that's a wee high.
Absolutely. And the biggest inconvenience side of it, like most things is just remembering the logins and passwords. So one of the things we, this is a little bit of a side and it goes back to kind of the previous episode is if you're using systems like antivirus software, which we highly recommend, most of those now have a password manager tied to them. So again, you don't necessarily have to remember, you know, the unique logins and passwords, but those password managers have a tendency to help with those things.
Tom Kaminski (04:54)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point. it's the three credit bureaus, right? Experian, Equifax, TransUnion. And I believe what they do is a user ID password and then usually have an extra pin like a third level to it. And using a password manager is a really good idea. that's an interesting extra step to take to make it even more simple.
Danny - YourCyberLife (05:18)
Yeah, especially because a lot of times folks kind of forget about it. So say if you're in the moment going through a refi or buying a car, getting a loan, just having that installed on your device and phone and just being able to access it quickly is very, very convenient. ⁓
Tom Kaminski (05:32)
like
it. Cool. Okay, what's next?
Danny - YourCyberLife (05:35)
Yeah, so it kind of plays along the same lines is talking about how to secure individual or important accounts. So the way we define important accounts would be things like email, your phone or cell phone provider, bank, and any financial accounts. So we highly recommend adding multi-factor or two-factor authentication to all those accounts in addition to having a strong password. So again, kind of going back to the idea of a password is
reuse passwords across multiple sites because attackers can do a couple things. They can either crack a password or easily guess it or gain that information through say phishing techniques, data breaches, or even use malware. So the idea with having a unique password for all the different sites we have to manage these these days is a little bit of a problem but
Going back to that idea of using a password manager through the antivirus software really helps with that. So taking that and adding an additional layer of protection, multi-factor authentication and two-factor authentication are key. what that is, it just adds an additional barrier and stops cyber criminals from accessing accounts.
Tom Kaminski (06:42)
Got it. Yeah. I, know, specifically to elders, how difficult is it to get that in place? what are the, best practices around that or do have general thoughts on that?
Danny - YourCyberLife (06:53)
Yeah, it can be a challenge. think a lot of times you'll have to get involved, especially if your parents aren't tech savvy, just helping them set it up and helping them understand why they're doing it because it does add a barrier, which is a lot of times perceived as an inconvenience, but understanding why you do it and that it's really meant to actually help protect you, I think is actually key in those.
Tom Kaminski (06:59)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and going back to the first comment on the credit freeze, there's a barrier to getting it in place, but generally as people age, they aren't opening as many credit cards. They aren't purchasing assets that require credit checks as frequently. I feel like as younger families whose lives are always changing and adjusting. So I just think that's, that's a powerful one in particular for the elder demographic because you just, you can get it done.
and store away those critical pins. it's like not a one time thing, but it's it's a thing you shouldn't have to revisit that often and
Danny - YourCyberLife (07:45)
Yeah,
you're not using it that often. I think it's again. It really stops things from an identity theft perspective
Tom Kaminski (07:52)
Yeah, that's great. Okay, cool. All right, number three. What do we got there?
Danny - YourCyberLife (07:55)
Thank
Yeah, so this one might surprise you. So it's shredding documents and not putting important documents in the trash. So dumpster diving is still a very real problem. So a lot of times you'll have folks throw stuff in there that contains anything from personal or financial or account data. And we say anything that's a unique identifier, shred that stuff. Don't include it with or don't throw it in the trash or anything like that. So examples, again, go back to credit cards, ATM receipts, maybe old
Tom Kaminski (08:05)
Yeah.
Danny - YourCyberLife (08:22)
checks, utility bills, and ones that often get overlooked are prescription labels. So taking all of that stuff and shredding it. And if you're comfortable setting up electronic formats or ⁓ notifications, and gets away from having to shred all this stuff, but it also helps prevent things like mail fraud, for example.
Tom Kaminski (08:40)
Got it. All right, so what I'm hearing is get your parents a nice shredder for the holidays. Yeah.
Danny - YourCyberLife (08:44)
Yep. And if you can
convince them to set stuff up electronic. So I know kind of older folks still love to get paper. It is a security risk because it goes back to the idea of mail fraud, right? So maybe someone gets access to a mailbox and there's account statements in there, loans, mortgages, all that good stuff. that can be all used for identity theft.
Tom Kaminski (09:04)
Yeah. I thought, I thought as a young business owner, I'd be able to fully digitize everything. Dude, it's brutal. It's brutal. And then, and then there's compliance risks to having paperwork out on my desks. Right? I'm every day surveying my desk, gathering up the papers, take them to my little shredder I have in my office and shredding stuff.
Danny - YourCyberLife (09:10)
Not quite there yet. Getting closer.
get there eventually. that's, I think that's the part that overwhelms folks a little bit is there's so much stuff that really needs to be shredded. It's easier just to throw in the trash and recycle it and just assume that it's going to be okay. most times it probably will be, but there's always a risk. I joke a little bit. had to have a conversation with my neighbor if their trash can recycling can blew over and their custodial statement came out, which had all of their information, their account numbers, values, all of that can be used to
Tom Kaminski (09:32)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Danny - YourCyberLife (09:52)
access an account. that's the that's the really important stuff to get rid of.
Tom Kaminski (09:54)
Yeah.
Yeah. I regularly review all client accounts to see, know, who's getting hard copy statements versus digital. the custodians are really pushing clients to go digital, which I appreciate for a number of reasons. you know, not least what you just described, like it's a piece of paper floating around, at least in an email, it's going to direct you to log in and then go through the authentication process.
So.
Danny - YourCyberLife (10:18)
Yeah,
Tom Kaminski (10:19)
Yeah. But that's a really good reminder. when in doubt, shred it. You know, it's kind of like if it's got anything more than your first and last name on it, even then, just shred it.
Danny - YourCyberLife (10:24)
We'll you later.
anything that's got that unique identifier that can be traced back directly to you, that's the stuff. Say pull out and shred.
Tom Kaminski (10:34)
Yep. Kick it.
All right. What's next?
Danny - YourCyberLife (10:37)
the next one's kind of interesting. touched on it, I think at the opening of the kind of the last podcast, but really talking about scam calls and where they're actually going. AI is pushing the envelope on the level of sophistication of scam calls. So the one that really ends up targeting a lot of older folks is AI voice cloning scams or what I would also call AI family emergency scams. So what criminals are doing, they're
Tom Kaminski (10:42)
Yeah.
Danny - YourCyberLife (11:01)
using actually AI to mimic a family member's voice and then pressuring the victim to send money urgently. So they're always going to use urgency, fear, pressure, intimidation. And the unfortunate part about this is, again, it's going to sound like a family member. It's going to sound like someone you know, and they're going to put you in a very stressful situation. So one of the tools that we recommend to combat that is a family password. So the idea behind a family password is pretty simple. It's a
Tom Kaminski (11:11)
Yeah.
Danny - YourCyberLife (11:30)
nonsensical word that everybody in the family knows, but it's never text, it's never wrote down or anything like that. So if you do get one of these calls, you can ask for the family password. And if the person on the other side doesn't know it or doesn't know what you're talking about, it's a pretty good indicator that it's a scam call in that case.
Tom Kaminski (11:46)
That's good. Yeah. And I can speak to that personally. The quality of the last few scam voicemails I've gotten are very different than even a month or two ago. They sound like legit people. They're formulating sentences that speak to our industry specifically. And it worries me for my older clients or younger clients that are out there that might not be living in cybersecurity paranoia every day that I live in. And so very scary.
I love the family password concept and it seems like a great way to, add those safeguards.
Danny - YourCyberLife (12:17)
Yeah, I totally agree. And you kind of hit on something that we talk or when we consult with businesses a lot is AI chat bots have got to the point where they can mimic a person. So they can represent empathy. They can carry on conversations and make it sound incredibly real. So that's the part of this really making a lot of these scam calls incredibly difficult for folks because you can't really discern between what's fake and what's real in those cases.
Tom Kaminski (12:29)
Yeah.
So trust no one unless you're physically in front of them. Okay. My words, not yours. All right, what's next?
Danny - YourCyberLife (12:47)
Fair enough, that'll work.
So the next one's thinking about social media and best practices here. this is a lot bigger conversation, but some of the key things we typically tell folks, everyone, even down to kids is really think before you post. So we recommend avoiding and sharing personal details like home addresses, phones, things like vacation dates, travel routines, because all of that can actually be used for cyber crime or real life crime.
There's a whole element of criminals that monitor social media and wait for folks to start posting pictures of vacations And then they can target their house and try to break into it. So limit what you post Also be cautious of who you add as friends A lot of times those can be chatbots They can be fake people and what they're trying to do is gather information for cybercrime So always be skeptical again. Don't click on suspicious links or maybe download
on social media, verify all those friends, and really watch out for, this is a huge conversation, watch out for, again, phishing and those AI-generated messages. So, romance scams is still the number one cybercrime on social media.
Tom Kaminski (13:57)
come. And so as it pertains to your parents,
Danny - YourCyberLife (14:01)
Facebook's
probably the worst one in my opinion, from a cyber crime perspective. ⁓
Tom Kaminski (14:06)
Okay. And so
what would the coaching be specifically, if your parents or elders want to share what they're up to share the fun they're having, what would the coaching be about posting?
Danny - YourCyberLife (14:17)
Yeah, so in those situations, definitely limit it to just close friends and family. really kind of monitor it. Yep, exactly. condense it down. Then if you're sharing stuff, share it after the fact. If you went on vacation, don't post any pictures while you're on vacation. Wait till you get home in that case.
Tom Kaminski (14:22)
So restrict your profile. Yeah.
Got it.
Okay, that's good. Yeah, and I guess probably audit your friend list, you know, if you haven't done so in a while, audit friend list and make sure everybody's profile is legit.
Danny - YourCyberLife (14:38)
Yeah.
Yep, absolutely. And just always be cautious, especially on Facebook. You get a weird request from a friend, someone that you might know that says, hey, take a look at this, click on this download, look at this attachment. There's a good chance their account might have been compromised at that point.
Tom Kaminski (14:56)
Okay, cool. All right, what's next?
Danny - YourCyberLife (14:58)
All right, so the last one is, Tom, sure it's something you work with too, is setting up a trusted contact.
Tom Kaminski (15:04)
Yeah.
Danny - YourCyberLife (15:04)
So really
this is just an ability to have another verification point. So we coach advisors on this mainly for the fact is say if you do get a really weird call from someone that sounds like your client, maybe they're requesting money movement requests or things like that. Having a trusted contact that you can reach out to just to validate to make sure things are okay and legitimate is a really good one. But again, it kind of goes back to that idea of, Hey, maybe we got a scam call and someone sounds like a family member hanging
out
from that and actually reaching out them directly or another person that might be with them just to be able to validate the legitimacy of the request.
Tom Kaminski (15:41)
That's great. That is another area of regulation that I appreciate. You know, there's a big push with financial advisors to get a trusted contact on file for their clients. My clients are like, why is this guy always pestering me for more information? And I appreciate, I hear you clients, but it's, it is valuable, especially even for younger people. You know, you never know. Yeah. To your point, I get a strange phone call or
Danny - YourCyberLife (15:52)
Yeah. ⁓
Tom Kaminski (16:04)
Young people can become incapacitated as well. You know, it's not just elderly individuals and or have cognitive issues. It can happen to anyone. so having that that trusted contact, even if it's your spouse or somebody close to you on file is really important. And I appreciate that aspect of regulations where they really are pushing advisors to run down a trusted contact for your clients or try really hard to get one on file.
Danny - YourCyberLife (16:26)
Yeah.
And it's interesting, like you said, we touched on it from kind of the last podcast, cybercrime is a multi-generational problem. Actually the largest growing demographic right now of actually becoming the victims of cybercrime is the age 20 to 29. And because they're in a tendency to trust text messages and sometimes voicemails and calls a little bit more and not using that skepticism. And so there's a whole world of cybercrime that's really built around simple everyday interaction. So things like.
hey you've got an Amazon package coming in click this to verify and enter your information so that demographic itself kind of plays the same thing right so it's like having a trusted contact even for them can be incredibly helpful
Tom Kaminski (17:08)
Got it. Awesome. Well, not awesome at all, Danny. I shouldn't have said that. It never ends. It never ends. So just like last episode, you did not leave us with any good stuff. This was all sad. Only fear and sadness. Your cyber life, only fear and sadness. That slogan and idea is free. That's a freebie. That's a freebie.
Danny - YourCyberLife (17:13)
It never ends, never gets easier.
Only fear, only fear. That's only thing I believe.
That's our slogan, yes.
Tom Kaminski (17:27)
Awesome. All right. Well, I really appreciate it. You know, that rounds out the list, right? We hit on all of them. Any resources you would point the audience to to safeguard themselves and the elders they care for.
Danny - YourCyberLife (17:39)
Yeah, so there's some really good public resources through the FTC and the FBI. Those actually link out to other government's resources as well. readily available, really, really easy to use. So I'd recommend those for anybody that's not working with you.
Tom Kaminski (17:53)
Great. Yeah. And just like the last episode, I'll make note of the fact that I use your Cyber Life product and we'll add that to the link in the show notes as well as a place you can go to as an audience member to learn and access the content Danny and his team are creating.
Danny - YourCyberLife (18:09)
Appreciate it.
Tom Kaminski (18:10)
All right, well
that's that's the challenge in closing come up with a happy episode and then I'll have you back
Danny - YourCyberLife (18:16)
We gotta get better at that. Yeah.
We'll find something.
Tom Kaminski (18:19)
Very good,
All Well, thanks again for joining us, Danny. I really appreciate you taking the time. and you did a great job as always, and we will definitely have you back again, to talk shop some more. Thank you everyone for tuning in again to another episode of sandwich bread podcast. we'll, link to the show notes on
with all the great resources discussed in today's episode. I wish you all a great week and we'll be back again soon. Take care.
