Dorothy Ricketts of Security Savings Bank monitors different types of fradulent scams that go on throughout the country and in the Monmouth area. It is important to recognize what type of information scam artists are looking for so you don’t fall victim to these terrible crimes. Ricketts highlighted some key info that scammers are looking for:
“The information included would be current address, previous address. It could include a social security number. It could include banks at which you’ve had a credit relationship or car dealerships – that type of thing,” Ricketts said.
Ricketts urges those worried about identity theft to use the resources available to them through their bank such as account alerts and freezes. She also encourages people to occasionally change their passwords to help minimize these attacks.
A common misconception is that hackers won’t take the time to sit down and type in multiple passwords to ultimately find the right one. This is somewhat true, but they don’t have to according to Ricketts.
“You think, ‘Oh, they don’t have all the time to sit down and type all those passwords.’ Well, they don’t. They create programs. They say, ‘we have this username and this password.’ And they send those programs to every sign in site that they know of or they think they want to get into. It’s called a brute force attack. If one of them works, they’re in,” she said.
To hear more about how to combat scams, listen to the rest of Ricketts’ interview below:
written by Jackson Kane
