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The most coveted things ID thieves want from you
Apr 7, 2025
What's now considered crucial data to protect may surprise you, because what identity thieves want from you is changing rapidly. Along with the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center, I outline steps you can take NOW to secure that data which is floating around online.
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securing your
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data it is not as simple as you think
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you can't just take a padlock in a chain
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and secure your data inside of your
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device because so much of it is now in
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the clouds and either commercial servers
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or those run by the government so the
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question is how do you safeguard it the
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digital world has changed what is
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important to protect and the value of
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that data and it changes it changes on
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an almost daily basis what's important
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today may not be important tomorrow that
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means we need to be a lot more focused
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on what data we protect and how we
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protect it the things that we really
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need to be focusing on today are our
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login and our passwords and our driver's
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license those those kind of
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credentials are being used and misused
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in ways that they have not been
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historically logins and passwords are
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the golden ticket right now for a bad
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guy who wants to steal your information
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as evidenced by the fact that in many
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recent data breaches criminals were
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after those loginins and passwords they
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are the keys to the digital kingdom
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today you don't ever want to reuse the
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same password on multiple accounts but
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keeping track of dozens of passwords can
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be a pain without the assistance of a
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password manager once you had to buy a
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separate app to do that nowadays
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password managers are built into
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basically every device we own whether
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it's the browser on your laptop or your
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smartphone's operating system they are
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very easy tools to use and they'll
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remember your passwords so you don't
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have to but what about the stuff you
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can't protect because it's locked in
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somebody's cloud server with the rise of
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AI should we we be worried about our
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fingerprints and our facial identity in
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a database somewhere not necessarily in
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a corporate database but in a database
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somewhere that then can be hacked and
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reused when they're storing the the
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image of your face or they're storing an
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an image of your fingerprints those are
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generally reduced to numbers it's not
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physically always the actual image it's
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it's almost never the image of a
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fingerprint while they may be able to
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replicate that at some point very
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difficult for them to do today it's also
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very timeconuming very costly and and
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identity criminals don't like either one
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of those things they're essentially lazy
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so much of our information is stored in
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various government databases without
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trying to get into all the political
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aspects of it should we be concerned
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about access of government databases and
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the loss of our personal information
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that way there's a lot of heightened
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interest there's a lot of there's a lot
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of nervousness about this but the
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practical reality is there's a lot of
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other places we should be worried first
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and there are steps we should be taking
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to protect our data um where it is at
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risk among the steps you can take to
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protect your data freeze your credit
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restrict access to criminals who want to
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steal your identity contact each of the
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three major credit reporting agencies
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and submit your free request online by
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phone or by mail download your Social
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Security statement to make sure
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everything is okay to do that create a
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My Social Security account on the Social
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Security website and use a secure ID
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number when filing your tax return it's
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known as an identity protection PIN
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that'll stop scammers from filing a fake
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return in your name to steal your refund
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unfortunately we now live in times where
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we have to act to protect our own data
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when we can if we make it inconvenient
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for the scammers to access it it's going
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to be a lot less valuable to criminals
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working for you I'm the consumer guy
3:50
Steve Frasier