Listen Now:
The Smart Take:
Retirees are increasingly targeted by cybercriminals — and the scams are getting more sophisticated. From fake emails and stolen phones to account takeovers and SIM card fraud, even cautious investors can be at risk.
In this episode, Tyler Emrick, CFA®, CFP®, shares a real story of an attempted security breach involving a True Wealth Design client — and what made the firm catch it before damage was done. You’ll learn the most common cybersecurity threats facing retirees, how to secure your financial accounts, and what to do if you think you’ve been scammed.
Plus, we cover smart strategies like using a password manager, enabling two-factor authentication, freezing your credit, and why every retiree should have a Trusted Contact on file.
If you’ve worked hard to build a secure retirement, this episode will help you protect it.
Here’s some of what we discuss in this episode:
🔐 $3.4 billion lost to scams in 2023—just from retirees
📞 How a client’s phone was hijacked and nearly cost them big
🎣 Phishing, fake tech support, romance scams & more
🔁 Best practices: strong passwords, 2FA, credit freezes, and identity monitoring
🛡️ New safety features: trusted contacts and “safe words” for financial accounts
Learn more about the Retire Smarter Solution ™: https://www.truewealthdesign.com/ep-45-retire-smarter-solution/
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The Hosts:
Kevin Kroskey, CFP®, MBA – About – Contact
Tyler Emrick, CFA®, CFP® – About – Contact
Episode Transcript:
Tyler Emrick:
Retirees are top targets for cyber criminals, and it’s not just phishing emails or fake tech support calls anymore. In today’s episode, we’ll share an attempted security breach of one of our clients in ways you can protect yourself in today’s digital world.
Walter Storholt:
Back on Retire Smarter for another episode. I’m Walter Storholt alongside Tyler Emrick. He is a certified financial planner as well as a chartered financial analyst and of course a wealth advisor at True Wealth Design. Wherever you are, you can check us out online by going to truewealthdesign.com. You can book a call, have questions answered and check out more information and resources there as well from Tyler and of course the whole team over at True Wealth Design. Great topic today, Tyler, and I’m looking forward to diving into this one about cyber security because these threats are real and I feel like more and more people are probably starting to know someone who is going through this or has gone through it or has been caught in some sort of these traps of maybe varying levels of severity, but it’s hitting all of us. I’m telling you what man, I get like 30 calls a day right now that all of them say probable spam, this thing just rings off the hook with spam calls.
Tyler Emrick:
Nope, absolutely. I think I could be in that camp as well. Hey, I’ll add it to the text camp too. I’ve gotten a few texts that have made me second guess, where I’ve got to go to the internet and double check and be like, is this a scam? What is this? Is this real?
Walter Storholt:
I get that sometimes.
Tyler Emrick:
The E-ZPass is always trying to get me every time. Yes. So yeah, they’ve definitely ratcheted up and I can imagine in the world that we live in today, with tech increasing and large language models and AI, what it could potentially get to and just how serious that we got to take it.
Walter Storholt:
Well, they used to have really bad grammar, so it was easy to spot it, but I guess they could use AI to fix some of their grammar issues these days and make it a little bit harder.
Tyler Emrick:
Oh, absolutely. Or if there’s enough, I mean, recordings out there of your voice or whatever, I mean it’s amazing what we can do now from a tech standpoint. So I can imagine that this is probably not going to go away, and thus we’ve had some recent experiences that I think lend itself, it propped us up to be like, well, hey, let’s do a podcast topic about it. Our clients are getting impacted. I’ll share a pretty tight story about really what prompted this whole podcast, and then we’ll touch on things that families, I think, can be aware of and some good practices just to make sure that you keep yourself as protected as possible.
Walter Storholt:
That sounds like a great plan. I’m looking forward to diving in and let’s do it because this is not just your typical cybersecurity episode or content. You’re coming to this with some real life examples, which I think adds a lot of flavor and, I don’t know, it really drives it home for a lot of us who are maybe concerned about this.
Tyler Emrick:
Sure, yeah, and we touched around it a little bit, but statistics are pretty wild to think about. The FBI came out and said there was like 3.4 billion lost in 2023 due to some type of fraud situation for individuals that are 60 and over, so over 3 billion lost for individuals 60 and over.
Walter Storholt:
Just for 60 and over.
Tyler Emrick:
Yep, 60 and over. Yeah. The average victim, I think, lost just over $30,000 in 2023 due to the criminals in that scenario.
Walter Storholt:
That’s life changing money for a lot of people, so that’s really unfortunate.
Tyler Emrick:
It is, yeah. And specifically, I mean, you think about our world with investments and money management and things like that, just over a billion of it was due to investment scams. I mean, I think I alluded to it a little bit in the opening, the phishing emails. We talk about the texting emails and that type of stuff. There’s a whole host of ways that these scams can play out and work and potentially affect you, but the investment scams specifically were the biggest piece of those losses. So it really hits at home and certainly something that, from a firm standpoint, we pay quite a bit of attention to and are always doing training on to try to make sure that we’re staying on top of best practices and what individuals and families need to be aware of because [inaudible 00:04:19]-
Walter Storholt:
What’s the difference, Tyler, between an investment scam and these phishing or the other types of scams? Is there something that, I mean when I get a text that says, “Hey, your crypto account password has been compromised, log in here to reset it,” it’s like, wait a second. Hold on.
Tyler Emrick:
Correct. Yes, so what-
Walter Storholt:
Is that investment scam?
Tyler Emrick:
Yes, yep. So the other side of that would be they call them grandma tech scams, where you get a text from a family member or they say they’re a family member and they’re in trouble and they need some help. Certainly the tech issue where they remote into your computer was another big one where you might have some tech issues or you get an alert that you need to change a password and you click on a spoof site or something like that and then they gain access to your computer and get in through that was another big one as well. But yeah. So many ways.
Walter Storholt:
So investment meaning it involves an investment account that they’re getting some money from.
Tyler Emrick:
Getting their investment accounts. Yep, absolutely. Absolutely.
Walter Storholt:
Versus you sending a wire transfer for some of those other types of things.
Tyler Emrick:
Correct. Which is in line with, I guess, like I said, what prompted the podcast today and the story, we will start out with it, but what happened with the family that we were working with and how we got involved was we actually had got a call from the client requesting a distribution. Now Walt, as you can imagine, this is not an uncommon occurrence by any means.
Walter Storholt:
Sure. Seems reasonable.
Tyler Emrick:
Yes, absolutely. But the individual and the team member that took the call was great. When she actually got off the call, she came to us and was like, “Hey, the call is really just, this didn’t sit well with me and I think someone’s got our client’s information.” And she began to share some of what we would call red flags that we are trained and taught to just be on the lookout for, the first of which is that she said, “It didn’t sound like the client at all when they called in and the individual actually mispronounced their last name.”
So I think you get that when you work with maybe a smaller firm. Our clients run into many team members over the course of working with us and certainly develop relationships, especially the individuals that are answering our phone calls and talking to our clients over the phone. That happens quite frequently. And so she was certainly able to pick up the fact that it didn’t sound like the client and then of course mispronouncing the last name, quite a big red flag there for sure. But aside from that, when they requested the distribution, they actually said, “And we’ll provide banking information on where to send the assets.” And this one, this is your prototypical red flag. And the reason for that is, is a lot of times when you work with an advisor or you set up an account, you’re actually setting up your banking information when you set up that account. You’re linking your checking account or your savings account to your investment accounts.
Walter Storholt:
No need to really provide it again.
Tyler Emrick:
Correct. Now, are there extenuating circumstances? Sure. Think of a one-time bank wire for closing on a house or something like that. Those are common. Those are typical. Certainly there’s a little bit of more stringent review on our part when we do that, but for a typical distribution, hey, for the vast majority of our families, those accounts are already linked. There would be no reason or no need to potentially set up a new bank unless something happened with your checking account or whatever, which is something the advisor, a lot of times, would know about or whatever. So just very, very uncommon. So we agreed with her and we’re like, “Yes, let’s maybe take a little bit of deeper dive here and not take it at face value.”
So we had another team member actually call back and verify the distribution. Now this happens quite frequently just in our processes where, when you do request a distribution, especially through email, because a lot of times it’s just easy to, hey, pop over an email. I need a quick distribution from an account or whatever, we will follow up with a phone call to get a verbal confirmation on that. So it’s not an uncommon practice and certainly something we wanted to do in the situation with some of these red flags that came back.
Walter Storholt:
You don’t want something lost in translation.
Tyler Emrick:
You got it. Right. So when we called, we didn’t get ahold of them. We left a voicemail and then we got an actual callback from the client, and this was another individual on our team that took this call and actually asked some more verifying questions. We’re like, okay, date of birth, social security number, some of your typical verifiers, and the individual was actually able to pass those verification data points. So date of birth, social security, but they still didn’t sound like our client and they still mispronounced their last name. Two pretty big red flags that we were worried of before. So as you can imagine, if those weren’t there, I mean maybe you work with a big brokerage house or something like that and you don’t have maybe that connection or you’ve talked to an individual, it can be a little easier for those scam artists to call back in.
Now, of course, those companies have processes in place to catch that and try to help and so on and so forth. But for us, it was really leaning on knowing the family and knowing the client. So we took that second call and we came back and digesting, and over the course of these calls that happened over a two-day period, we actually got a third red flag that came in where the client overnight, we came into an email from the custodian saying that the client had actually sold out of some investments inside of their accounts, which again, it’s very uncommon with the way that we work with our families. A lot of times we’re managing those assets for families and making those buys and sells and deciding on which investment gets sold out to do the distribution because some thought and some planning that goes on with that. So very rarely, almost never, does a client log into the actual custodian where the assets are held and place a trade to get a distribution out of the account.
We were almost very confident that this was a fraud situation at that point. So we were able to have the actual advisor who worked with the family on an ongoing year in, year out basis actually make a call-out to another family member to verify the situation, and sure enough, it was fraud. So what had happened is somehow, the fraudster actually got complete access to the client’s phone. So that way when we left the voicemail, they were able to call back and see that. They actually got log in information on the phone to be able to access their accounts online, to go in and manually place that trade and potentially get to and do the distribution.
So the client was actually very compromised, where they weren’t even necessarily getting the phone calls that we were sending out to them and calling to and they were getting intercepted. So I mean, I never had seen that before or been through a situation where the entire phone had been compromised, where the calls were going to and being intercepted by the fraudster themselves, but it goes to show how some of these processes that were put in place are there for a reason, and boy, when you have to lean on them and use them, it’s very, very thankful. So you go back to some of the statistics. That family could have been a part of that, one of those statistics where the fraudsters had just gone in and updated banking information and sent it to their account or whatever the case may be.
Walter Storholt:
I mean, if you combine that with not pronouncing the last name correctly, or if they were using some of this AI technology, like you were talking about, where you can clone voices and all that stuff, I mean that just makes that even harder to detect these things.
Tyler Emrick:
Oh, it does. Well, and I would say our relationship with that family really helped us in this scenario be able to catch it. And two, for the families that we work with, a lot of times we know their financial goals, we know expected distributions, we know what the game plan is for the year. So anytime-
Walter Storholt:
Yeah, this would’ve been part of a discussion. Yeah.
Tyler Emrick:
A lot of times. Not that it’s not uncommon, hey, things come up. Not everything could be planned for, but we got a heightened sense of security when something outside the norm gets popped up like this, when there’s a pretty sizable distribution being requested and some of those other red flags were popping up. So we were really happy with the team and the way that they responded and caught this, and we were really able and fortunate to be able to protect the client from the attack that they got.
So of course, when we think about today and the podcast, that story prompted it and then now we want to just touch on and figured it’d be helpful to just, hey, let’s outline some of these common threats, some of the precautions that you can take as you’re looking at your own situation to make sure that you’re doing everything that you can to make sure that this doesn’t happen to you because it is extremely, extremely common. Like I said before, we have what I would call, I don’t want to say like a light threat, but occurrences happen all the time, nothing quite to this degree where they had taken someone’s phone and made a call to us and requested the distribution. Not quite to this degree, but certainly where passwords or sensitive information had been leaked in a breach or something like that, to where some of these other scams [inaudible 00:13:48]-
Walter Storholt:
Well, just look at the number of calls and text you’re getting is the opportunities are there every single day.
Tyler Emrick:
They are.
Walter Storholt:
So only a few of those need to grow into an issue to then become a problem.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, well, those are probably the most common ones. I mean, if we were just listing out and saying, “Hey, what are the big ones that you need to be aware of?” The phishing emails and the texts are certainly what we’re getting inundated with on a day in and day out basis, or at least it feels that way from me. We were joking that E-ZPass text, I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten, “Hey, you haven’t paid your E-ZPass bill, get on and log on and pay it by clicking this link or call us.” I mean it got me so much where I was like, oh wait, am I behind? Did my card fall off? I had to, again, best practice certainly going online, doing a quick search and right there first thing that comes up, hey, E-ZPass, scam.
I think that’s a lot of these, which is good, a lot of them get reported and are out there to where if you’re ever at a hey, this doesn’t feel right or doesn’t seem right, doing a quick search a lot of times can pull it up. The tech support scams were not something that I were as aware of, but certainly when we get back into the data and look at that big 3 billion number in ’23, that was due to fraud, the tech support scams were a big piece of that as well. Fake alerts saying your account or device was compromised, click this link and go from there. That was a big one that I wasn’t as aware of and don’t maybe get as much in my face, but that’s there.
Walter Storholt:
We’ve tried to spread the word in my family. I’m known as the IT guy in the family, even though I’m not an actual IT guy, but I know enough to be dangerous, I guess, to help people. Every time you go visit mom and dad or the in-laws, it’s the, “The internet’s been weird lately, can you fix this?” Or, “My inbox is so full, can you help me cull it down?” Little things like that. But I’m happy to do that role because I’ve told everybody, don’t ever hire an outside third party remote consultant to fix your computer at this point. You don’t need that. You’ve got someone in the family that can help you with that, so just don’t even, we’re not going to fall victim to that one.
Tyler Emrick:
Clearly a big risk when you look at it, for sure. Well, and another one that surprised me too, not only the tech support, but the romance scam or imposter scams and getting those texts, “Hey, it’s a family member. Hey, this is so-and-so. I’m in trouble. Buy me a gift card or do this.”
Walter Storholt:
Well, think about it. It sparks urgency and emotions, so it gets people off guard and away from making thoughtful decisions and yeah.
Tyler Emrick:
Sure. Yeah, no, I didn’t really think about the emotional side of it, but certainly they’re definitely appealing to that emotional side, trying to help out a family member or a friend for sure. And then the other one that was mentioned through the data and looking back through that FBI report I mentioned earlier was account takeover attempts, which is what I would categorize the story that we shared, where the fraudster was truly just inside accounts, had login information and was trying to physically just pull the money out of the account themselves, as opposed to the, “Hey, wire us this,” or, “Hey, buy us a gift card and send it here,” or some of the other, I guess, more typical ones that I’d run into.
So be on the lookout for those phishing emails and texts. Obviously, I’m sure most listeners will be like, “Yeah, I get inundated with them.” Tech support scams, romance scams, and then of course the account takeover were the big ones from 2023 that were there. And obviously the risks, I mean I don’t know if we need to dive into them, they’re probably pretty clear, but online access to your investment accounts, that’s a big deal, especially if that online access gives you distribution capabilities or changes to the accounts.
Now, a lot of times, for custodians and things like that, you think back to that prior situation where the client had called in and said they’re going to give us updated banking information. A lot of companies like ours and big custodians in the industry, they have their security around that too. So if you go and update banking information, a lot of times that requires two-factor authentication or that requires a wet signature or that requires a five-day hold, so that way they can mail you something saying, “Hey, the account was updated.” So a lot of, if you don’t know, certainly talk to your financial advisor or your custodian, they’ll tell you some of those practices that are in place so that way, if someone does get your login information, hopefully there’s a second round of protection there for you. So that way they just can’t log on, update banking information and then send cash out. [inaudible 00:18:20].
Walter Storholt:
You see how vulnerable your client became with losing the actual phone because it then neutered all of those other second factor authentication things, all that protection.
Tyler Emrick:
It did. Yeah. We think that maybe they somehow got their SIM card out of there.
Walter Storholt:
Interesting.
Tyler Emrick:
So a big deal from that standpoint, but not only access to your accounts, but banking, bill pay is another big one. Certainly some of the big things that you do online as you think about retirement like applying for social security and your banking information being on there and log in or benefit [inaudible 00:18:54]-
Walter Storholt:
I didn’t even think about the social security one, like redirecting funds from something like that.
Tyler Emrick:
You got it, yep. And it seemed like that a lot of times the initial getting access to this certainly comes through email links and clicking on those phishing emails, where the fraudsters are trying to get your email contact information because you think a lot of times that’s where your two-factor authentication goes or getting access to that email opens up the door to quite a bit else
Walter Storholt:
Before you move into talking about protection, I just want to highlight too, don’t just think about this internally, just for yourself. Because a lot of us might have that bravado, I think I do, to be like, oh, I’ll spot these things. I’m not that vulnerable to this. But when I saw my grandfather a couple of years ago, who’s a very smart guy, but moving more into that vulnerable population, it was an eye-opener and be like, wow, okay, this isn’t just me, this is family members, this is loved ones who are vulnerable to this. I can play a role in trying to help them or combat this in some way to help save them from this heartache. So hopefully people can view it from that, not just us self view here, but maybe as your whole family or your loved ones and you getting this knowledge could help them eventually.
Tyler Emrick:
Oh, absolutely. And can I double down on that aspect of it can happen to anyone. Where these have come up in the past, these individuals were sharp with it and just happened to fall victim to a particular scam for whatever reason, but it isn’t always like a dementia case or something to where is lost sight of. So it can truly impact any one of us, for sure.
Walter Storholt:
I had a family member call a couple of months ago. I won’t throw the specific family member under the bus, but this was part of it, was the family member said, “I think I messed up. And I’m embarrassed to,” there was a level of embarrassment to even then call and be like, “Can you look at this and see if I messed something up here?” And I was like, “Well, first of all, don’t be embarrassed and feel free to double check.” And we looked at it and sure enough, and the family member was like, “I feel so dumb now, but in the moment it felt fine and I was distracted and I did it.” But if that person hadn’t have reached out, they might’ve just let things float and then they could have been taken further advantage. Instead, we spotted it, they would immediately were able to close things down, get it switched and fixed and nothing happened, but they had accidentally, just in a distracted moment, pulled that trigger. But please, let’s get rid of the stigma of being embarrassed if you do fall for one of these things.
Tyler Emrick:
100%. More than a few times over the last handful of years, that’s happened. And every time we go back to that thankful, I’m glad you asked. I’m glad it was brought up and shared. So yeah, I agree 100%.
Walter Storholt:
What’s the old counterterrorism? If you see something, say something.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, if you see something, say something. Yes, I like that. We’ll build that in. But I mean, a lot of the training that we do on that says exactly the same thing. So yeah, bring it up, talk about it for sure. So best practice as well. So what can we do? What do we need to be thinking of to basically try to avoid this situation happening to you? So of course, I mean the first one here is like, okay, duh, but strong unique passwords on every financial site. So over the years, I’ve been a culprit this and have since changed. I was the similar password, changing the number at the end and maybe going. Since more than a handful of years ago, I’ve broke that bad habit and one of the good things that’s helped me break that bad habit was actually using a password manager.
I used to have a little bit of an issue with the password managers because I was like, well, what if someone gets that one password?
Walter Storholt:
What if they get that one?
Tyler Emrick:
[inaudible 00:22:54], right. But then you start putting it in the context of like, okay, well one, with the password manager, two-factor authentication, you could set up extra security in place on that particular password and that access to certainly protect that and going in there. But then also two, you think about the next level of protection where if you’re on a different IP address or it’s trying to access any one of those logins from a different thing, you’re going to get something because if you have that two-factor authentication set up, it’s going to be there in a protection for you from there-
Walter Storholt:
It can get a little annoying, but when you realize it’s protecting you pretty good, you’d rather just go through the annoyance.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah. And the biggest security mistakes are reusing the same password and using easily guessable passwords and it does solve those. I mean you started looking at some of the passwords that are generated from this thing-
Walter Storholt:
Oh yah, I suggest this password. No one’s guessing that.
Tyler Emrick:
And I’m forgetting it if it’s not saved in here. So there’s no way I’m going to remember-
Walter Storholt:
No rhyme or reason to it, yeah.
Tyler Emrick:
But it does solve the two biggest culprits. And then you think about best two-factor authentication on that and the login to get there. I was like, okay, I got over it and certainly now, I think I’m probably a bit more secure than what I was back some time ago.
Walter Storholt:
Did you see the thing on Twitter or X not too long ago, literally just a week or two ago, and it had, maybe from one of these breaches, someone actually then aggregated what everyone’s pin number was and they put it in this special graph and then you could see these high density areas pop up and they were all for 4321, 1234. 50% of people repeat the same two numbers instead of picking four unique numbers, very clear patterns. That’s like, yeah, we’re still, even in 2025, we have people doing 1234.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, there’s got to be some rhyme to be able to remember it and easy and coming across. So I mean we certainly can fall victim to it, for sure.
Walter Storholt:
If you’re watching and you’re 1234, please, if nothing else from today’s episode, go fix that problem.
Tyler Emrick:
Yes, agreed. But I’ve said it a couple of times now, but it came up in the last one, but the enable two-factor authentication, which is big. And some of my logins, I actually have it on every single one of them, and I have it even where it doesn’t even remember my IP, where I got to do it each time when I log in. Bit of a pain, but certainly there to make sure there’s that extra layer of security for sure.
Walter Storholt:
I like the text one, but now they’re even doing that authentication app, right?
Tyler Emrick:
Yes.
Walter Storholt:
Some other third-party.
Tyler Emrick:
There’s Authy, there’s the VIP one. There’s a few different ones that that we’ve used or we use in the past to access certain things to add additionally, where the code changes every 30 seconds or whatever. I’m sure listeners have run into that through their work or job or whatever the case is, but yeah, no, those are great. Another thing you could look into would be freezing your credit reports, Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, which would prevent fraudsters from opening up new accounts in your name. Now of course, there’s some things to be mindful of if you go to that level.
You’re not going to be able to open up accounts or apply for new credit or anything like that, so you would need to go to, anytime you’re transacting business in that way, you’re going to have to go to each of the three, unfreeze it. You can do a temporary unfreeze, so that way you can work to open up whatever account or get financing or whatever the case is from there. So it does add some extra work, but it is a way to ensure that individuals aren’t open up credit cards in your name or whatever. If you don’t have your credit reports frozen, certainly just identity monitoring or identity theft monitoring is, I think, a good practice. Whether it’s a month getting on to a website like Credit Karma or one of the free ones or whatever, where you’re just checking your credit report, looking at the accounts that are out there, just making sure there’s no errors in it. Certainly [inaudible 00:26:54]-
Walter Storholt:
Sometimes your bank will even do that. I think our bank, we get some monthly report or alert of not only scores, but reports and things like that.
Tyler Emrick:
Correct. Do they put it on your statement too, the score itself? Or is it just the alerts on any changes?
Walter Storholt:
Both.
Tyler Emrick:
Okay. Both. All right.
Walter Storholt:
We actually get a score and then the reports.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, that’s perfect. Well, and then it takes a lot of that where you have to get on, so that that’s great. If you have something like that, I think that’s a great thing. Anything that’s just periodically checking. To take it one step further, there certainly are now identity theft monitoring just companies that’ll go in, like an Aura or a LifeLock that you pay them a certain amount annually or monthly to go in and be doing that for you as well. Certainly that can be a fine option, and I think there’s even some where there’s different levels of help that you can get if you happen to go through a fraud situation and maybe could have some protection or some representation there.
Walter Storholt:
Sure. Or even insurance based off of that.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, absolutely. So you can take it as far as you want, but certainly whether you’re doing it, whether you have a company doing it, those are all great ideas as you’re thinking about just the protections to put in place. There’s even some tools too, where you can pop your emails online and they’ll search to see if it’s been compromised. There’s a multitude of them out there. You can just run a search and go-
Walter Storholt:
Google is constantly telling me I have lots of compromised passwords.
Tyler Emrick:
Is it? Well, it’s even built in. So our password manager, it’s built in. So when I first got on there, granted I started putting them in. They’re like, “Oh, that one’s compromised. That one’s compromised. Hey, that one you should probably change.” So it makes it right in your face. Hey, you need to take a look at these ones and go in and adjust them.
Walter Storholt:
I’m like, oh, it’s my pets.com account. I’m not worried about that one.
Tyler Emrick:
Yes. Mine’s always associated with my old Hotmail email address.
Walter Storholt:
[inaudible 00:28:48]-
Tyler Emrick:
Now I’m dating myself with Hotmail, but hey.
Walter Storholt:
Using that one.
Tyler Emrick:
[inaudible 00:28:52]. If you get my Hotmail email address, you know that you’re not getting the prime email access, that’s for sure.
Walter Storholt:
Right. That password was several iterations of Tyler123!.
Tyler Emrick:
Isn’t that the truth, but all those are great. So identity monitoring, freezing your credit, two-factor authentication, maybe a password manager. These are all things that I would keep in mind as you’re just trying to think about just how you’re using your password, how you’re accessing your accounts, and what protections you have in place. Now, of course, if something happens where you think you’re subject to being scammed in any way, shape or form, it’s always a good idea to be changing those passwords. Certainly reset that two-factor authentication. You can contact, if it’s with your investment accounts, contact your financial advisor, contact your bank, contact your custodian, where your accounts are held.
These are all great processes or great things to be doing if you are subject to a fraud situation, to let those custodians know. And a lot of times your advisor or your custodian or your assets are held can put short-term freezes on the account or an extra security step for distributions or something to that effect for a period of time to make sure and ensure that you’re maybe even a little bit more protected from there. Of course freezing your credit, if you haven’t done that and you’re subject to scam, going in and doing that. And the final recommendation would be if it’s a scam, you can always report it to the FTC. Yeah. I think it’s called identitytheft.gov is the website that you can go to report that stuff as well. So all things to keep in mind if you are subject to a fraud situation, for sure.
Speaker 3:
What would your life look like if you designed it around your true wealth? It’s a powerful question and one that True Wealth Design helps individuals, families, and business owners answer every day. With a fully integrated approach to financial planning, tax strategy, investments, and business advisory, their team can bring clarity and confidence to every part of your financial life. Take the first step toward a stronger financial future with a no cost, no obligation discovery meeting. Just click the link in today’s show description to get started.
Walter Storholt:
Yeah, all very helpful. Love covering some of these examples of where people can take some action here, Tyler, hopefully preventative, but also good to know some of the steps in case we do fall victim to this. We had our computers and tablets and phones all stolen a week before we closed on our first house several years ago, and so went through a lot of these issues. Luckily, I guess things back then were a little less connected than they are now, but I remember going through that routine of not only now having to deal with replacing that stuff, and those are the purchases you want to be making right before you move into a house with that expense, but also calling banks and changing passwords and just figuring all that stuff out. It can be very stressful.
Tyler Emrick:
It can, yep, but definitely worth the steps to protect yourself and just making sure that you’re got everything buttoned up. And as you think about, if you’re listening or you’re a client of True Wealth Design, I mean know that certainly we take your security and cybersecurity very serious and have processes in place. We can certainly talk to you about those when you come in for your meetings, if you’d like to. We’re even implementing the option of what we call like a safe word, where we can put basically a safe word for any type of distribution request. So when we are calling to verify that distribution, instead of your typical verifications, like date of birth or social security, think back to the story we talked about today, where they had our client’s information, date of birth, social security information, the safe word would be completely separate from anything that would be personally identifiable to you and would add a layer of protection on there.
So that could be implemented, and certainly we could go as far as even a trusted contact, which I think is a great process as well. A trusted contact is basically just someone that you would authorize True Wealth Design or your financial advisor to call if we suspected something was going on from a cybersecurity standpoint or your wellbeing or whatever the case is. So that safe word and trusted contacts are two additional layers of protection that can be added as you think about working with True Wealth Design that can really, I think, help. Certainly helped in the story that we talked about earlier today, so feel free to bring that up as you’re talking to your [inaudible 00:33:16]-
Walter Storholt:
Make it something obscure, right? Settle on it beforehand, but if this was familial with your, I think this is great to do with your relationships to prevent from those grandmother in jail type conversations, but-
Tyler Emrick:
Correct. Yeah. Absolutely.
Walter Storholt:
What did I give you on your 16th birthday? Or something like that.
Tyler Emrick:
Or whatever, yep, absolutely. Just make sure it’s not public record, it’s not something that’s data that could be tied or something like that. Certainly something out of the blue.
Walter Storholt:
Your favorite football team and you have your favorite [inaudible 00:33:45]-
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, I was going to say ice cream. Football, ice cream, whatever. Come on, it could be anything. Yeah, no, but all good. Yeah, but keep that in mind. I think this is all good things to keep in mind, as you’re thinking about just protecting yourself and your accounts.
Walter Storholt:
Well, it’s really helpful. I thank you, Tyler, for bringing all these things up and walking us through this. I know that this is not one of those nitty and gritty episodes, where we get into the planning and the investments we’re talking about the all retirement stuff, but you know what? None of that matters if we then don’t have protections in place. And if all of this crumbles down, it undoes all that other hard work. So this needs to be central. It needs to be talked about.
Tyler Emrick:
No, absolutely. I agree.
Walter Storholt:
If you have not walked through this planning before, again, we often talk about the finances, the numbers, but if you’re planning and you don’t have a cybersecurity plan or are working with an advisor and you don’t have some of these safety nets in place to handle an issue like this in case you’re a victim or a target of fraud or spam or something like that, hopefully this raises some eyebrows today and gets you to take action on fixing that problem. If you’re looking for an advisor to work with, you’ve got a great team at True Wealth Design. You can listen to past episodes of the podcast or watch them here on YouTube. For more information about what it’s like to work with Tyler, Kevin Kroskey and the rest of the great team at True Wealth Design, if you’d like to schedule a visit with the team, you can do that very easily.
They like to start off with a 20-minute conversation, a discovery visit with an experienced financial advisor on the team. To book that, all you have to do is go to truewealthdesign.com, click on the Let’s Talk button and you can schedule that time to visit. Again, just go to True Wealth Design, that’s linked in the description of today’s episode, and then just click the Let’s Talk button when you get there. Schedule your time to meet and see if you’re a good fit to work with one another. As you’re watching today’s episode, perhaps on YouTube, don’t forget to hit the button and also share this with other people that may find it useful. Hit the bell notification if you want to be alerted to future episodes as well. Don’t forget to subscribe so you’d never miss an episode and share this with folks who might find it helpful. Maybe someone else in your family could benefit from this information as well. Tyler, thanks for the help. We’ll talk to you again soon.
Tyler Emrick:
Oh, yeah, we’ll catch you on the next one.
Speaker 4:
Information provided is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax or legal advice. Information is obtained from sources that are deemed to be reliable, but their accurateness and completeness cannot be guaranteed. All performance reference is historical and not an indication of future results. Benchmark indices are hypothetical and do not include any investment fees.
