written about the salem witch trial. her book as a best seller, we are live and we are live in the center of miami-dade college. we have created a call call and said here and we want to introduce you to an author named adam levin. the book is called swipe, how to protect yourself in a world full of scammers, fissures and identity thieves. first, first of. first, first of all mr. levin, you are noted as founder and chairman of credit.com. what is that? >> credit.com is an online educator, advocate. it is also a site where you can get products and services that are appropriate to where you are in your credit life.

also it provides free scores in pre-information as to how to get you from wherever you are to wherever you want to get to. so you pay less money for access to money than you pay when you started. we are one of the longest surviving.com. we started in 1994, we swapped a hard drive to get the domain so that is how long we have been around. we have had a wonderful opportunity to communicate with consumers, helped millions of people over the years and we hope to continue to do so. >> you are also the founder of a website called identity theft 911. >> yes idt 911 is the new name because we are scaring people with old navy. it's an organization that works with companies for the benefit of their customers and employees come out we have everything from identity theft at education, identity management, breach response, preparedness, identity resolution for those who have

become victims. where the first company ever founded based on a core competence of helping people get through the trauma of being victims of identity theft. >> okay so your book is called swipe. if someone goes to credit.com how much do you and your company learn about them? >> we learn a great deal. but they give us their information willingly. we have free products and services for them. it is designed to help them better their position in the credit world. so it is sort of a collaborative effort on credit.com and as consumers we are security conscious. we do not share information. that is all about education, information, helping consumers. we consumers. we have one of the largest content library, thousands of articles that are there because our goal is to answer question and to anticipate the kinds of questions that will be asked.

>> from your book you have written since 2005, more than, more than 1 billion sensitive records with personally identifiable information has been leaked. >> yes. that is really the problem. we are in a new dime now. the paradigm is that hacks and breaches have become the third certainty of light behind death and accidents. because way over 1,000,000,000 files have been accessed with personal identifying information, here's one inevitability and reality. each of us is going to become a victim of identity theft in our lifetime. unfortunately possibly multiple times. so the question is, how do you adjust yourself to this new world. as much as you would we would like to say can be prevented, fortunately cannot. you can do everything right but if you're on the wrong database

at the wrong time you're going to be a victim. if the information includes your social security number they have an option on your life and it is no longer as to if but when they are going to exercise it. >> is a social security number the golden key? >> it is. the fact is we need to get off this addiction to social security numbers. we are starting to. do you know for those of us i got that magic card in the mail that medicare card that is your medicare number is your social security number plus a letter. there's a new law that over time they will change that so even seniors are horribly exposed. >> ..

we have done things a certain way and need to change that and you also have to say is there any other reason? if you die we need your social security number. call my lawyer, he has my social security numbers and, you don't need to have it and there are so many instances where people ask for your social security number. in financial transactions the social security number, hopefully we will start moving off of that but when you sign up your kids for the league or go to a variety of different programs, royalty program, we

need is your social security number, no they don't, don't give it to them. >> a child and social security number is christine. >> totally. a great story, one of the people i know who is an expert, chief privacy officer from one of the biggest organizations and world her daughter became a victim of child identity fact nine years before she was born because someone invented another, used it, social security and ministrations not knowing that assigned number to her and she became a victim. the recent children and social security numbers are important as they are pristine, they are not used for anything, no one should be using the social security number for credit or anything like that until they are age 18, so people steel this information, use and no there are 15 or more years because children don't check this social security numbers, parents won't check it children that social security numbers and the only time they even think about is if

they want to get a college loan or a car, their first credit card, that doesn't really happen. parents use children's social security numbers on their tax returns as dependents but there has been a breach of the transcript section of the internal revenue service so more and more of that information is out there. it is a real problem, child identity theft. >> host: who are the scanners and identities thieves we should be most worried about? >> there are four types of hackers and they are the problem, those pack because there state-sponsored, hacking for intelligence reasons, those that sponsor because they want to make the money, those that hack because they can do it and they want to prove they can do it and those that hack because they're trying to prove the point. there what we kolkhoz hackers. ashley madison was a cause hacker for 37 million people had their information exposed

because someone was the angry. the sony hack was a combination of someone doing it for money but really because they were state-sponsored hackers representing north korea and they were angry at sony for putting on a movie they felt made fun of the premier of north korea's do you have those, people who want to make money so they hack people who work in organizations that are angry at the organization and want to make a point. you have people who are subject to being bribery victims who are being exported the might give up information. the office of personnel management which is the human-resources department of the united states government was hacked presumably by china but after the chinese authorities had done what they want to do with that information, as they could sell a dance suddenly people are exposed. the problem with that hack, 5

million fingerprints were exposed. the most intimate details of investigative reports for background checks for security clearances were exposed as a result of that hack and those intimate details could lead the person who has that information in their position to blackmail intelligence operatives to try to bribe intelligence operatives and these are the different ways that you can be exposed because of that, social networking, people get on social networking, they have to tell everybody everything and they don't realize some of the people they think are their friends are not their friends. people are approached by someone in a romantic way but suddenly they ask too much, they want to get too close too fast and then start asking for many, start asking for personal information and you could be exposing yourself that way as well. >> host: don't give your social security number even though many

places as fort it require it. besides the social media aspect what are we missing as far as protecting ourselves? >> guest: minimize your risk of exposure, don't care your social security card, those of you who are children, don't carry your inventory of credit, debit cards, don't give information to people you don't know and be careful about giving information to people using you know. if someone calls on the phone and says there from the irs hang up, they don't do that or say they are from your bank, if they ask you anything more than we noticed some suspicious activity in your account, just confirmed the transactions. if they ask you to authenticate yourself, hang up. protect the devices that you use, you're smart phone is more than a communication device, it is a data storage device and make sure you put the right software and protections on their, same with your laptop,

with your ipad. you should also be using long passwords and don't share your password across your entire universe of websites because all you need is to have one hat on one website and diffuse the same password they are going to be in to every one of your sites, and monitor, go to any willcreditreport.com and get a copy of your free credit report and see if anything doesn't look like, is a credit thought, and get free overview or scores updated monthly, check your bank and credit-card accounts and databases and if that is too much of a pain, up for what is transactional monitoring, if your bank and credit-card company, any time there is activity in your account, they take it as being suspicious but you may catch it because you know where you are and where you haven't been. you can get more sophisticated forms of monitoring including

monitoring done me not meet alert which is someone is attempting to open an account in your name right now. is the you? yes or no? that could prevent fraud. consider no one but you can't get into your credit account without a passport or pin number and last is the damage. a lot of people say do-it-yourself, you could and then you have no life but there are many institutions out there that have programs available to protect you free as i perk of your relationship with the institution, your insurance company, many credit unions, smaller banks, the age our department where you work. call and ask do you have the program, am i in it? its not what do i need to do to get in it? well will it cost and make the determination if it is worth it but because identity theft has become so sophisticated and it takes people so long to find out they are a victim that by the time they do find out there's so

much in the suit they need a professional to help them through it. >> host: there has been a lot of talk about back door into our smart phones and encryptions. does that increase security? the city decrease security? >> when there are back doors in encrypted systems you are weakening the system. they say just make sure the government has the back door. look at the track record of the government protecting the data we have given them, from the white house, the state department, the postal service, the department of defense, the department of education, the office of personnel management, a state-by-state bistate you see all these breaches time and time again, encryption should be absolute. we don't have enough, the reason we are in the mess we are in today is because we didn't encrypt and the only shot we

have at protecting ourselves is we have to encourage, we have to protect that encryption, the government has different ways it can get the information it wants, there are many different systems out there that aren't encrypted, it can use if it has to and if it goes about it is the right way which is going about it through the judicial system, but we can't look for ways to weaken that which we are trying to strengthen and we have to assume also based on sophistication and creativity and persistence of hackers whatever you create, a system you think is totally secure they may well find a way around it anyway, they have their own system, they are going to do what they are going to do, we have to get better at detecting the bad guys. >> host: awhile back there was a commercial on the air of a gentleman saying here is my social security number, go ahead. come and get me. >> he was trying to say i have a

wonderful company behind me and they can help me if i have a problem but what you don't want to do is precipitate the problem. the real issue is in the world we live in you can do everything right, you can secure yourself the best possible way you can, you can do everything everybody told you to do but it you are on the wrong data base and the wrong person gains access and your information is on there, you have a problem, the truth is yes, there are companies out there that can help you and the wonderful place to learn more information, consumer federation of america has developed a site, idtheftinvoke.org and a number of providers have taken the best practice pledge, they have a series of questions and answers and they tell us the right thing the company can be doing and what you need to be thinking of if you choose a company to help you and you should minimize, you should monitor, you should have a program to manage the damage,

monitoring programs out there have different damage control programs attached to them, read up on some, study them, understand them, make the right decisions. >> host: what do you think of retina scans and fingerprints to get into your phones? >> that is all good. but again, mastercard came out with a new thing they are developing which is to an online transaction, take a selfy and you are supposed to blink because it is supposed to show proof of life so it is not a static picture but i was with the security expert that said someone can cut out one of the eyes and wink. we have to continue to move toward biometrics, very important part, the way you press the key on your smart phone, your heart beat, your blood flow, that will be part of

the biometric security system in place, but you not only need the biometrics the defector authentication. to authenticate yourself for the site, the site to be authentic itself and you end it needs to communicate with you and make sure they got the right person, the right device and as time goes on we will have more of them. >> here's the book, swiped, adam