UnHacked - Cybersecurity Made Simple for Small Businesses

Justin Shelley (00:00)
Welcome everybody to episode 62 of Unhacked. We are cybersecurity made simple for small businesses and we're going to broaden the audience just a little bit today. I'm Justin Shelley, CEO of Phoenix IT Advisors and I help businesses build their wealth, grow their market through technology and AI and all those cool fun tools. And then I help them protect all of that from the cyber criminals who mostly live in Russia, among other countries. Mario will have something to say about that.

from the government fines and audits that will head your way if you get, if you don't do things right. And then finally, if you get breached and it's bad enough, the attorneys are going to come and sue you for not doing things right in the first place. So it's a, it's a fun game we play in this world. And so I protect you from all that. And I am here as always with my loyal, faithful friend, Mario, Mario, tell everybody who you are, what you do and who you do it for.

Mario Zaki (00:51)
How are you guys? Mario Zaki, CEO of Mastek IT, located in New Jersey, right outside of Manhattan. I've been in business for 21 years. We specialize in working with small to medium-sized businesses, keeping their network safe and keeping the CEO's ability to sleep better at night, knowing that their network will be secure the next day they come into the office.

Justin Shelley (01:16)
it from the Russians. ⁓

Mario Zaki (01:19)
and everybody else. We're more broad than Justin. Justin focuses just on the Russian hackers. He's got a special niche.

Justin Shelley (01:26)
I only take on one enemy at a time. All

Jocelyn King (01:28)
you

Justin Shelley (01:30)
right, guys, today we are here

with, I'm super excited to introduce Jocelyn King, who goes by the queen of online safety. She's a top cybersecurity expert, keynote speaker, and founder of Smarter Online Safety. Jocelyn, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jocelyn King (01:46)
thank you guys for having me. It's so great to be on your show.

Justin Shelley (01:49)
Well, Jocelyn, I really like your story because I kind of have, it's not similar, but it's close enough. ⁓ I fancy myself a computer tech, or at least I did. I love to tinker with things, hardware, software. used to write code. ⁓ That was my love. That was my passion. And now I'm a cybersecurity expert. And it's not because I woke up one day and said, you know what? I want to fight Russian hackers and all the other hackers in the world. It's because one day a client called me up and said, we got ransomware.

And, and long story short, that completely changed my world. It changed my identity. It changed everything about my life, my business. Um, and you have a story that is much more personal, uh, much more devastating. And to the extent that you're comfortable, I was hoping that you could share that story with us today.

Jocelyn King (02:36)
yes, I'd be happy to. ⁓ It was not a happy story at the time, but I'm glad that I'm on the other side of it and can help other people by sharing it. I was a woman in business working at a large Fortune 100 company in the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley area, and busy just making a living, building a life, you know, all things being good. And I was actually at a great

upswing in my career and life was going really well and I thought wow this is great this is you know this was the goal I was about to get promoted.

I had just been acquired by, our company had been acquired by Intel. So I was getting to work at Intel, work with the CEO and some board members, executives, was heady stuff, rubbing elbows and all this good stuff. And I thought, wow, this is fantastic. And right about then, and not having anything to do with my now working at Intel or anything else going on, I was targeted by cyber criminals.

Justin Shelley (03:29)
Nice.

Jocelyn King (03:42)
And the reasons why I was targeted were more from the personal front and where I lived and them trying to get access to things around my home. So it's too long a story to go into for this podcast. essentially, it was a long, very comprehensive attack. they not only hacked through my network, but they ultimately root-kitted.

family members phone, so they were able to unlock the dead bolts of our home at midnight. They were able to break into our home and detect it. So you imagine if you come home, found that your home's been broken into, you you see things missing, things turned over, and that's a violation and very devastating. What I went through was I found out months later that my home had been broken into and I'd had surveillance planted in my home. I had a microphone in the ceiling of my bedroom.

so that the last people on earth I'd want to have any knowledge of my life or my thoughts or my conversations or anything else were the very people who were listening to my most private conversations and intimate moments. And I only found that out because we had had a leak in the attic and we had to have some insulation replaced. And the attic professionals who were up there working, when they were moving it, this microphone popped out of the ceiling on the wire down into our ceiling.

Mario Zaki (05:10)
Wow.

Jocelyn King (05:11)
So to find out that that had happened, but no particular time that we knew of, and because our network had not been breached, the security company that I was paying a tremendous amount of money to, and it spent a lot of money on having cameras installed all around my house and my perimeter and everything, had been completely manipulated so they weren't recording things and they were missing stuff. So every time I contacted law enforcement,

about anything threatening that was actually threatening, I didn't have the evidence. ⁓ We had the recording device, but it's something that could have been bought by anybody. ⁓ It's a near field communication device. Somebody just had to be within x yards of our location to do it. So there was no fingerprints or smoking gun like you get in a good CSI episode. So therefore, all the help that I was going to the authorities for,

I couldn't get. I then found out the hard truth that I was one in a million, in a bad way, one in a million statistics of people who were filing cybercrime reports with the FBI that year. This went on for two years. And it took such a toll. I was on antidepressants and Ambien. My husband at the time was having a series of small heart attacks and

having to have major surgery, had a personality change. ⁓ I could not go for a promotion. I was barely keeping it together at work. I was fortunate I wasn't getting fired because I was in such a brain fog from all the fear and constant anxiety that I was living under. And I was spending money hand over fist for private investigators for having my, I had my house swept for surveillance because there were things happening.

There were things happening when I went somewhere that made it clear that somebody knew I was going there. so we knew something was up. So we were paying a lot of money to have these things and they didn't catch it. They hadn't swept the ceiling. And so it's just money after money after money, private investigators, skip traces on people, trying to get evidence so I could even find out who it was and filing a restraining order. Just one thing after another. ⁓ Even having them go so far as to actually try to run me off the road.

on a drive and I had a dashboard camera and they were on motorcycles on the side of the car so they weren't picked up. I mean, they knew what they were doing and I was in fear for my life. So all that to say I lost over a half million dollars, I lost my 22 year marriage over it, and I almost lost my mind and I certainly lost a lot of my physical health.

Justin Shelley (07:45)
Yeah.

Jesus.

Yeah.

Jocelyn King (08:00)
And there was one point where I thought, this is getting worse every day. I don't think I can go on another day. But then the thought that the bad guys would win, that my kids, my adult kids would know that somebody, that I hadn't figured this out or rallied, and that they might end up facing the same thing someday. I could not live with that. So that rallied something deep inside me. And I said, I'm going to claw my way out of this hole.

Justin Shelley (08:21)
Yeah, right.

Jocelyn King (08:30)
And then I'm going to learn how to recover and how to prevent it from happening. And then I'm going to share it with everybody I know and anybody who wants to learn. And that is what I've been doing. So this all happened, started happening 10 years ago, was going on for seven years. And I ended up meeting some of the top cybersecurity people in the world, the people who are protecting our nuclear submarine codes because they had hacked into a government.

agency and we're told they could go to prison or work for the government. And so these are the top hackers ⁓ that I was meeting and protecting large Fortune 10 companies and banks and trillions of dollars on Wall Street. And I got to work side by side with them in some companies. And I spent several years full time being on the dark web, learning the business of cybercrime, seeing how hackers work, regardless of what country they're from, Justin.

Justin Shelley (09:25)
Yes, right.

Jocelyn King (09:26)
all of the countries

that they're from, including the US, because it could be the Middle East or it could be the Midwest. But learning all that so that I could learn what the Hacker's Playbook was and therefore say, here's how you can make yourself 10 to 20 times safer today, and here's how you protect yourself. So that's what I'm doing now.

Justin Shelley (09:29)
they're everywhere. They're everywhere. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

this, is a hell of a story. I, you know, I wish most, most of our audience will listen audio only. I wish they could have seen Mario's face as you were telling this story, because it was registering everything that I'm thinking. And by the way, this is like the third or fourth time that I've either heard or read your story. So it's not new to me. And still, as you tell it, I'm just like, Holy shit. You know, it just, it hits hard. Mario, have you ever come across a story anywhere similar to this?

Mario Zaki (10:11)
Yeah.

just in movies to be honest with you but but what were they after like that's my question I mean usually

Justin Shelley (10:17)
Yeah, right, right.

Jocelyn King (10:24)
They ultimately were trying

to get us to move because they were involved with drug trafficking and some other things. And because of some logistical reasons, they needed us to move was what the conclusion was by the private investigators.

Justin Shelley (10:32)
wow.

Mario Zaki (10:38)
So

they wanted your area, they wanted your house.

Jocelyn King (10:41)
That's

why they were trying, that's why it was like a campaign of terror to get us so afraid that we would move and run. But of course, being cyber security, I'm thinking no matter where I go, I can't get rid of them. move and moving, there were a lot of reasons why just upping and moving was not a simple solution for us. But it was meant to drive us out of our homes and drive us crazy along the way. they almost succeeded in one and did not succeed in the other.

Mario Zaki (10:47)
Mm.

Justin Shelley (10:53)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (10:53)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (11:08)
So are you still in the same home?

Jocelyn King (11:11)
I am. I've secured my perimeter and I have safety in place now and connections to people monitoring things and things set that would not be pleasant for, you know.

Justin Shelley (11:12)
Wow, okay. I mean.

Mario Zaki (11:12)
Good for you.

Jocelyn King (11:27)
to run into, but I'm much safer. more importantly, I travel a lot for my business, because I'm a speaker and a trainer, and I'll get hired by a company to go in and talk to the employees to train them how to protect themselves as individuals. And then that helps the company get safe. Because once, as you guys know, employees and humans are the...

Justin Shelley (11:28)
Right.

Jocelyn King (11:50)
90, depending on what stats you're reading, it's between 80 and 93 % of all hacks come from that kind of human error and a lot of them from clicking on phishing. So when I go in and teach individuals what to look for to protect themselves in their own life, you see, then once you see it, you see it everywhere. You see it at work, you see it anywhere else. And so I get hired by companies to come in as both a perk, but also as a way to help their CISOs and security heads. ⁓

know how to better protect the company. And so I'm traveling a lot. So when I'm traveling, I'm also just, you know, doing travel, you know, I do a lot of safety stuff to be safe when I travel and when I'm home, which is, you know, some amount of the time and when I'm gone, I always have people here who are I don't just leave my home open and publish I'm gone, you know, I have I have ⁓ people who stay in my home who have backgrounds and being able to protect themselves and stuff. So it all works out.

Justin Shelley (12:23)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (12:46)
So let me see, you said how long ago was this?

Jocelyn King (12:50)
It started 10 years ago and it ultimately went on for three to five years depending on how you want to define it.

Mario Zaki (12:56)
And what was the

end result? How did they catch them? How did it stop?

Jocelyn King (13:02)
Well, unfortunately,

as I said, there was no smoking gun and no fingerprints. And so no definitive proof of who it was, even though the authorities involved and myself and my family and my confidants kind of all know who the bad actors are and were. ⁓ there were so no, but to put it mildly, no justice was done. And I never regained a penny of the half million dollars that I lost.

Justin Shelley (13:33)
Again, just.

Jocelyn King (13:34)
But

I've had friends tell me I'll make it back from the Netflix series once it's put together. Yeah. I am writing a memoir about it, but my first book out that's coming out shortly is a book on online safety. It's online safety for women, and that's my first book out. And I have the memoir in the background, and I will get it out here in the not too distant future.

Mario Zaki (13:39)
I was gonna tell you, I was gonna tell you like you you need to this has to be a some sort of movie or a special

Justin Shelley (13:39)
I mean, you need to.

I hope you really do.

I yeah.

I can't wait to read it. Honestly. ⁓ crazy. And again, like we could just stop right here. That's, that's a story. It's a hell of a story. ⁓ but we're going to dig in. And, so I know that you have a pretty broad audience in the work that you do. And, you know, as we, talk back and forth, ⁓ and trying to come up with what we talk about today, ⁓ I appreciate you indulging me, because

Jocelyn King (14:06)
Hahaha

Justin Shelley (14:29)
I want to talk about what I believe to be a very underserved area of security and probably a very, I don't know. It's just needed. It's just needed. I don't, I don't see a lot of resources and this is for our senior citizens, our elderly community. And part of there's a, there's several reasons, but one of the reasons that I'm kind of passionate about this is I was at the grocery store maybe a year ago.

Jocelyn King (14:34)
Yes.

Justin Shelley (14:57)
And I was buying a bunch of supplies and we were, we were late. were on our way to a wedding and I had to provide this stuff. You know, I was bringing the stuff for the wedding so I couldn't be late. And as we're checking out our, the cashier kept looking over at this older gentleman who was at a, a money machine and it's, ⁓ Bitcoin and Western. I don't know whatever it was. This machine does all, all financial transactions online. ⁓ I've never used one personally, so I.

I can't really speak to it, but he was in a state of panic and the cashier was just kept talking to him. It's like, and we're trying to figure out what's going on. that finally dawns on, myself and my fiance who was with me that this, and he was on the phone. What was going on is he was on a phone call with what he believed to be law enforcement. And they were telling them that if he didn't immediately buy Bitcoin, which he did, and send it to them, which I'm

pretty sure he did that the cops were on their way and they were going to arrest him. Now, Liana, God bless her. My fiance just kind of like, she will, she's, she will just help, you know, wanted or needed or otherwise she's going to get in middle of it. And she did. And she, she just went over there, ignored everything I was doing, trying to buy these supplies and starts talking to this guy. And she's like, no, give me the phone, give me the phone right now. And she grabbed the phone and she just starts yelling at the guy. You want to, okay, come on down here. You say your cop.

Get your ass down here. Let's go. Go ahead. Go ahead. Arrest me. Arrest it. You know, she's just screaming at this guy. And, and so finally the call disconnects. ⁓ but this poor guy, you know, by at that point, ⁓ the, manager of the store finally came over and we're like, you know, we don't know how to use this machine. Can you get his money back? And, and as far as we could tell that was gone and it was a significant, I don't remember the number, but it was a significant fee or amount of money that, that he had sent.

And it's gone. ⁓ I've had experiences with my parents who have called in, in the middle of some version of this, where they're trying to get defrauded out of money. And so the, the, point here is like, Jocelyn, you do a lot of work in the business world. You do a lot of work in the community at large. I do a lot of work in the business world, Mario, you do work in the business world. What I don't know of is a place where senior citizens and also really, ⁓

kind of does apply to our targeted audience is the business owners. Where do we turn to get help for our aging community? So that's what I want to talk about today. Let's dig in. We'll define what the threat is, what the defense is, what tools are out there. ⁓ you know what? And honestly, maybe we need to put our heads together and build something. If it's, if we determine that it's not out.

Jocelyn King (17:43)
Right.

Right. Well, and you bring up an excellent point. know, one of the reasons people ask me, why do I have a book coming out on women? women are a vulnerable minority who are targeted a lot, particularly by a certain type of people. But every group is targeted in different ways. And I very much care about what's happening to our elderly, especially, you know, the silent generation, you know, the World War Two generation and the then the baby boomers and all of that are

Justin Shelley (17:58)
Yeah.

Jocelyn King (18:13)
Let's face it, everybody listening, I don't care if you're 18 or 35, everybody knows what brain fog is like. And just as you get older, you can have a bit more brain fog and a bit more, and whether you even have any kind of diagnosable form of dementia or anything, it's very hard to keep up with everything that's going on in our technology world.

Justin Shelley (18:23)
Yeah.

Jocelyn King (18:41)
I remember listening to my grandmother tell me about planes, the first time she saw a plane, and they didn't have refrigerators and stuff, now let alone smart fridges, let alone a smart fridge, Justin and Mario. So you think about this incredible rate of change that we all experience. And anybody listening of the five generations that make up your audience? ⁓

Justin Shelley (18:50)
Right.

Jocelyn King (19:06)
Even for the youngest generation of millennials who grew up, know, ostensibly learning tech, you know, from the time they were very young, ⁓ it's still overwhelming, even for people who grew up with it as part of their daily life, the amount of change.

And then when you picture a couple generations back before that, we're talking about people who were still having problems programming the clock on the VCR. And I say that not in any derogatory way, but just that there is so much rate of change at a time when our brains, I've studied neuroscience and our brains and how they work. even though they're plastic, they're more like Play-Doh than concrete.

They're not as pliable as a young brain when it's in its act of learning. so trying to keep up with this. And then you add to it that they grew up at a time when you could leave your doors open and your neighbors would come over and stuff. so a sense for the most part, obviously, plenty of people grew up in bad neighborhoods and stuff. I don't mean to diminish that. But there was a sense that you could trust people. And

Justin Shelley (20:01)
yeah.

Jocelyn King (20:16)
And you and I know, and people are not going to be generally paranoid, especially our elders are not going to be paranoid about being suspicious of everybody they meet. And that's what makes them very vulnerable. But when you and I were talking about this, the answer is not to make them paranoid. First of all, it's a horrible way to live.

Justin Shelley (20:33)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Jocelyn King (20:41)
and secondly, even though cybersecurity professionals are called paid paranoid for a reason, ⁓ you know, it's not, it's, it's, we're not trying to change the lifestyle of people who have worked really long and hard in their lives and deserve a chance to relax and enjoy their life. However, just like I learned how you got to lock your deadbolt at night, you know, the gone are the days when you can just live in the, live in the city and not have any, any locks on your doors, let alone.

not lock them or leave your windows wide open and not expect some trouble depending on where you live. That's the current situation we're living with online, except as we know who work in cyber, it's even worse because we're in peacetime as a nation, but we're in daily war online 24 seven. We are in a military zone online and we don't, and especially,

Justin Shelley (21:35)
Yeah, nonstop.

Jocelyn King (21:40)
I mean, all, let's say US citizens, and it's true in lot of countries, but let's just talk, you know, speaking from an American perspective, you're not expecting that you're having to go do battle every day or that there are criminals. It's like, like people who lived in London, you know, and in 1940, you know, you have this sense that you've got a real bad threat, and you've got to protect yourself from it. So we have to teach them how to be wise and what to look for.

and we need to be their resources.

Justin Shelley (22:12)
Mario, I want to punt this to you for a second. What are your thoughts on this?

Mario Zaki (22:16)
I mean, I 100 % agree with everything Justin just said. I ⁓ see it from like my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, you know, they'll get something like a text message and it says all like, you you haven't made a payment on this or, know, your whatever is expired, you need to send it. You know, we all see you get those text messages on a daily basis.

You know, we've had to tell them like, if it's weird, send it to me. Let me tell you if it's true or not. The problem is, not all senior citizens have that person that they can just ask and stuff like that. And, know, Justin, one of the things that we harp on all the time is educate your employees, educate your workers. And just like Justin said, like,

these people have already done their time, they're enjoying their retirement and they are not getting that continuing education. A lot of times it's either what they're seeing online, on the news or what they're scrolling through on like Facebook. So, and there isn't really that many campaigns online for older people that will say, okay,

this is how you can detect if this is a false text message or a false email or a forced phone call. I forgot where I actually had a conversation with somebody about it, but the reason you get a lot of these spam callers during the day, you know, when you're, you know, between like a 10 and four is because they realize that, you know, senior citizens are not at work.

they have a higher probability that they will answer the phone. And you know, where if it's like one of us like working during the day, if you call me at two o'clock in the afternoon on my cell phone, I'm probably not picking up, you know, cause I'm either in a meeting or, know, I know it's not, you know, real or whatever. Most senior citizens, they will answer the phone. They will be, you know, gullible and believe whatever it is. And

A lot of these hackers will actually, if they see, they detect that it's like, if they can tell during a conversation that they're not older, they'll just hang up. You know, they're literally just, it's a numbers game. They're calling until they find somebody older and then they'll like try to intrigue them in the conversation, you know? ⁓

Justin Shelley (25:02)
Well,

and if, if exactly what you said, if the, ⁓ the target is available during the day in contrast, the ones that they would reach out to support or not. Right. Like us, where I work, you just said you wouldn't answer the call. So you've got, you've mentioned your mother-in-law, your father-in-law, something happens to them and they want to reach out to you as their trusted expert and you're busy at work. So it's kind of a double whammy with the timing anyways. Right.

Mario Zaki (25:15)
Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and it's it really is and I remember I I'm one of those people I Like to mess with these guys when they call in, you know, I my wife my wife gets so angry and she's she just like just hang up Why do you pick up? I like me if anything and gives me more ammunition to kind of go on a podcast and be able to talk about it, know, and there was one time where I

Justin Shelley (25:37)
You

Jocelyn King (25:38)
Yes.

Right.

Mario Zaki (25:57)
actually just kept a person on the phone and he kind of, I forgot what I did. I made him laugh and he ended up telling, we were actually having a conversation for, I think it went by like seven minutes. And he was telling me, he's like, yeah, we're gonna keep trying. Eventually we do get it. We get people that are gullible, that don't understand what's going on and they will just.

You'll be surprised by how many people actually believe this stuff. For us, it is like, who actually falls for this stuff? You can tell this guy has a foreign accent and his name is Dave from the IRS. It just doesn't sound right. But to some people, they just hear the letters IRS and they just go like, my God. ⁓

Yeah, yeah, here's my checking account number. Here's my, you know, ⁓ credit card number. Yeah, let's do it, you know. Where, you for us, we just laugh and try to just mess with them, or at least I do.

Jocelyn King (27:06)
But Mari, you bring up a good point, because like you said, who would fall for this? And the truth is ⁓ over 90 % of people. ⁓ the other thing too that I think one of the biggest, I think there's a couple factors if you want to jump into a couple things, Justin. And I know you did ask me about a couple of stories as well. But one of the things that happens is, ⁓

first of all, as far as reaching out for support, I mean, think about it. If you have a friend that you say, oh, you can call me if you have trouble, and I'll pick on both of you since you're men too, have a little bit more, women are a little more like, hey, I can't figure this out, can you help? But think about it. There's a sense that you're really in trouble if you're having to reach out, like, oh gosh, you haven't figured it. so you don't feel empowered. You feel like you're failing and somehow.

Justin Shelley (27:43)
Sure.

Yeah, right.

Jocelyn King (28:01)
and you feel you're bothering somebody. And then you add to that this other thing. We also expect that we're going to somehow tell elderly people, who by the way are our parents and grandparents and were the bosses of us when we didn't know how to tie our shoes. And now we're treating them like they're babies or children. And if you put yourself in their shoes, they don't want to be treated that way. So very often the way we tell them is we treat them like children.

Justin Shelley (28:17)
Mm-hmm

Yeah.

Jocelyn King (28:30)
And they don't want to, and think about it. mean, the reason people who actually need to stop driving and need to go into assisted living don't do it, and they wait far too long is because they don't want to be dependent. They want to keep their autonomy. We all want autonomy, independence. So the more you're going to be much more helpful to any elderly person in your life by letting them know you're there to assist them, not to.

Justin Shelley (28:44)
Yes.

Jocelyn King (28:57)
know, be their parent or take care of them or that they have to go into, you you want to think of it from the power dynamic. It's well that you're doing it out of, you know, respect for them because they're so, you know, talented and capable and they've accomplished so much that anything you could do to help them would be an honor, you know, and a privilege rather than, I know you don't know this stuff and you're making bad decisions and scolding them. It's much better to come to them like you want to help them. And I think how we approach them

Justin Shelley (28:58)
control. Yeah.

Yeah, that's, that's a great point.

Jocelyn King (29:27)
has to do with everything, with whether they're never gonna call us, or call us one in 10 times, or call us nine in 10 times.

Justin Shelley (29:34)
No, great point. It's scary stuff. go ahead.

Jocelyn King (29:38)
Yeah, there was a

story that I got to speak to. A woman called me to help her and her father. What had happened was he, so he's in assisted living and he lives on his retirement and he lives on the interest of his nest egg, shall we say. And she's a busy working mom. has...

kids who span a 20 year age range. So she has some grown kids and she had kids about to go to college and she's, you know, in her mid fifties. So she's still got college funds for two kids. And then she has, you know, two adult kids who about to have, who have children and she has grandchildren to think about. And then she finds out that her father's entire retirement is gone because he gave the information to a scammer on the phone.

that he'd been talking to over a period of time, he lost everything. And so he got swindled by fraudsters out of his entire life savings that he worked his entire life for. And now he's financially dependent on her. Let that sink in. Picture your situation. And you've got, now you're thinking, my gosh, do I have to take my college, my kids' college funds, a way to fund them? Or do I have to think about having...

Justin Shelley (30:50)
Yeah.

Jocelyn King (31:00)
Dad come and live with us, nobody's home to take care of him. Think about how that changes your entire life in an instant. This is happening every day. And that to me is the biggest crank because it's impacting so many folks. And then you've got the father who now feels like a burden, who was a brilliant person. That's the other thing too. A lot of people, and I had to learn this, when I was going through all this, I didn't want to talk to people about it.

Justin Shelley (31:07)
Yeah, right.

Jocelyn King (31:28)
to get help because you feel like you're stupid or you, why did I, how did I not find this? And it took me through hard knocks just to learn there is zero correlation between IQ and life savvy and being a victim of cyber crime. Cause there's too many variables to being a victim. And so the number one thing is people don't want to say what they're going through. And then that gives the hackers the ability to let things get far too far along.

Justin Shelley (31:46)
Yeah.

Jocelyn King (31:57)
before there's any interception. So there was no way to recover this money. It was wired overseas. And a lot of people think, well, I'm going to let my bank or my retirement institution company, they're going to protect me if anything, if I lose money. Now, if your bank gets hacked ⁓ from their cybersecurity tech and your account gets drained, you will get financial remuneration or credit card company.

Justin Shelley (32:10)
Nope.

That's different.

Right.

Mario Zaki (32:22)
you

Jocelyn King (32:23)
And so people have this false sense of security because they've had some charges reversed and they think, they'll take care of me. But when you initiate a wire transfer of all of your money.

Justin Shelley (32:32)
or a bad guy does on your behalf.

Jocelyn King (32:34)
Yes, and but you've you've given them your logins and everything you are the responsible party and that's what most people don't understand then that's why you know that You can lose everything and have no recourse for getting it back. So I think that those are the things we have to know

Justin Shelley (32:40)
Yep. Yep.

Real quick. Do you,

can you, can you share a dollar amount on what was lost in that case?

Jocelyn King (32:54)
Yeah, $300,000.

Mario Zaki (32:58)
You know, the thing is, and this, this kind of ties into a little bit what we talked about last week, Justin on a podcast last week. The, you know, so I have for seven, almost 30 years, I was working with TD bank, you know, I had it for my personal account, my business account. And I ended up, so what triggered the whole thing is I ended up going on vacation.

overseas and me and my wife last year we fell in love with a certain area and we bought like a place you overseas it's still under development and we're like this is going to be our perfect retirement place and the way it works is you know every couple months we have to make a mortgage payment and you have to transfer you know using a wire transfer overseas

and we're obviously aware of where it's going and how much we have to send. For me, it was something that really aggravated me with TD Bank that every time I needed to send a wire transfer overseas, I couldn't do it on my computer or phone. So I would have to go into a branch. And it was very inconvenient. And that's the point, you know, for America's most convenient bank, it was not convenient for me. And

Justin Shelley (34:21)
You

Mario Zaki (34:24)
It really annoyed me. And then I ended up switching over to Chase. Chase gives me the ability to send a wire transfer overseas, you know, from the convenience of my home or my business. And throughout that process, I've realized that they, know, Chase has a lot more security measures in place for this. like, for example, if you're trying to pull some, any money out of my account,

it will automatically alert me on a text message and an email and I have to log in through the website and approve it. So it's like a second or third method of authentication. Where TD technically had like you had to go in their branch and do it. They didn't have that ability where if something gets pulled out of my account, they tell me.

Jocelyn King (35:05)
It's definitely a multi-factor. ⁓

Justin Shelley (35:07)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (35:20)
Oh, this was done. You know, I thought that was great that they had that in place. But I do want to call out some banks and I feel like it, you know, they should have something in place where if it's going to be sent overseas, the bank needs to do more to stop it. Like right now I know I can go in there, you know, and send a wire transfer and get it approved, know, I'll prove it myself or whatever.

But I feel like the bank should be doing something. Like they should alert, you know, hey, you're, you're, you're, do you know, they call you and say, do you know you're transferring money to somebody overseas? Okay. Like I feel like, you know, it's hard for us to do anything, but the banks should be doing something. I know it may, you know, make a bottleneck of, you know, work for them, but to, to be, you know, scammed out of $300,000 for somebody that's

literally living off of that. The only person that's able to really do much about it is the banks.

Justin Shelley (36:27)
So let's move to that. we're, getting close to time to wrap up anyways, but let's, let's end on a note of what can we do? How do we help the eminence? It's everybody, right? We're, talking today about senior citizens, but what, what is the answer Jocelyn and in your work, what would you, what have you found? What do you recommend?

Jocelyn King (36:43)
Right, well, and I actually

am doing more and more of this small group trainings on going into retirement, living areas and talking. One thing I just want to call out a couple of stats real quick too, so that we understand the enormity of this. So of the 60 plus year old US population, last year was over $40 billion scammed. Over 600,000 cases, so we have 330 million

Americans and there were over 600,000 cases and those were just the ones that were reported. And of those, the average was over $60,000 per victim.

Let that sink in for a second. So what I tell, most of my clients are in the 40 to 65 year old range. they've earned enough to have too much to lose. And they're also looking at, they're going to the sandwich generation where the elder parents who are on some kind of retirement.

that should they lose it or be one of these victims is going to affect their children's college education because of financial hits and their grandkids, you know, and things like that. So it's really multi-generational. And what I recommend, and you asked, there are things that people can do, like go to AARP and they have some trainings that are offered by third parties that you get free with membership. But the...

The thing is there's all these foundations. And what I learned the hard way is I'd learn one thing about how to protect myself online, and then another, and then something else about phone scamming. So I think, OK, good. I'm good. But there's five other things where I have a weak gap that I don't know about. And as we say in cyber, the bad guys only have to be right once. So the problem is I could have nine out of 10 things set up really well and that

10th thing that I don't even know that category exists, let alone take protection. That's where they're going to get me. So what I find is very important is that we need to know how to help our elders protect themselves, and we need to be part of it. So you asked, what can we do? Instead of telling them to call when they're doing wire transfers, here's my recommendation. And I'm saying this live because nobody else is saying this, and this I've come up with, and it's really working for the people that I've

Justin Shelley (38:47)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Jocelyn King (39:14)
that are using it, put their TFA on their bank accounts and all their retirement accounts to go to your phone. Because if you are, like even when I was working at Intel, if I'm sitting in a boardroom in a meeting, if I get an alert that somebody's in there, I would rather text an elderly relative and say, you trying to transfer? While I'm in the meeting, then to find out later they lost $300,000. And how long does it take? then I'd say, you, and then say, you know,

Justin Shelley (39:22)
⁓

Yeah, right.

Mario Zaki (39:38)
yeah.

Jocelyn King (39:42)
please stop. And then to your point, Mario, if they can put it so that it's blocked, that's even better. But put the TFA phone number as your phone. And then that way, you're not overly controlling, but you're checking in on them. And they get to know that you care rather than you're policing them. And just say, yeah, I want to help you. Because if something could happen and you don't find out about it until it's too late, that's far worse. So I think make the TFA yours. The other thing is,

This is a, like I said, this is a population that grew up with open doors and you could go in and out of neighbors houses and you could ride your bikes. I remember they didn't, they weren't afraid of kids being kidnapped and all this stuff. They weren't raised with all that. So they never learned stranger danger that most of us grew up with. So you've got to teach them about stranger danger online. And you've got to, ⁓

And then if you can relate it, most elders have like favorite movies and heroes, whether it's, you know, the Old West or Mission Impossible or if you can tie something in to kind of say, you know, this is really going on. And so we got to watch out for these people and they're really getting hard to spot. And if you can then share, you know what, I almost got caught the other day. Because that goes back to that feeling empowered and having a power thing. If you can say, you know, I almost got, I almost.

fell for something the other day and you tell them what happened. And he said, so we need to protect each other. We need to help each other. And you make it that you're like a team rather than a parent to them. That can really help. So I think that that's something worth doing. And then ⁓ really going in and tightening their social media privacy for them. They're usually on Facebook or something else because they want to see pictures of their grandkids and connect with other elders.

Justin Shelley (41:19)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Jocelyn King (41:38)
So just, you need to, first of all, learn how to do social media privacy yourself, but then also go in and get their settings so that there's no public sharing. ⁓ Block ⁓ stranger, ⁓ unknown people interaction. they meet somebody at the retirement home or the VFA dance or something, they can connect on Facebook with them there. So don't allow people to get to them.

Justin Shelley (42:04)
Right. Yeah.

Jocelyn King (42:07)
And then also let them know that their friends can get hacked. So anything you post there could be taken. It's like giving photos to friends and then having their home broken into. So you kind of want to explain a physical world ⁓ example of something that you're protecting them from. And ⁓ then I think the other thing is just never click on unknown links to say, if Bank of America...

tells you that you need to do this. Don't click on that link and don't call that phone number. Go to your bank and call their number. help them get the numbers of these financial institutions in their phone so they can call. Because looking it up online, they might get confused. Pre-programmed numbers.

Justin Shelley (42:53)
Pre-programmed numbers. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Or they get scammed links. Like you search something and you can find links that aren't accurate and phone numbers that are not accurate. So yeah, great points.

Jocelyn King (42:57)
Correct.

Correct.

Mario Zaki (43:02)
And not only that,

sometimes you mistype, you know, like they are also prying on you mistype something and all of sudden you get that alert. Oh, your computer's hacked. Call this number. Their first instance is right away. Oh, I got to call this number. And then you hear about it. Yeah. You hear about it two hours later, you know, and you know, it's too late. And that's the whole thing. It's like,

Jocelyn King (43:06)
Yes. Yes.

Justin Shelley (43:06)
Yeah.

Jocelyn King (43:12)
Mm-hmm. Yes. Right.

Justin Shelley (43:15)
Yeah.

Jocelyn King (43:19)
I made a mistake, yeah.

Yeah.

Mario Zaki (43:30)
You know, you hear about it when it's too late, you know, and unfortunately with some of these elderlies They panic, you know, then that's the whole thing. Like that's the reason these hackers are targeting Yeah

Jocelyn King (43:38)
Right. Well, and by the way, we all do. We all do.

That's how every cyber criminal is successful. I always say this in one of my talks. What's the number one tool that hackers have? And people are saying, know, ⁓ this or the phone robots or the algorithms or AI. it's like, nope. Fear. Fear.

Justin Shelley (43:42)
Yeah, it's true. Yeah. It's all emotional.

Psychology, emotion.

Jocelyn King (44:01)
And I've

studied, I'm a certified neurosculptor for a reason, but basically that's a fancy way of saying that I've studied our brains and how you go. So when you, as soon as you think, uh-oh, there's a grizzly bear, which in this case is, uh-oh, there's a, you know, I've got a virus on my machine. You get out of your prefrontal cortex, which is all your best thinking in the frontal lobe of your brain. And you were in fight or flight response. None of us do well there. That's why any of us can fall for something.

My cybersecurity friends, we've all fallen for something. ⁓ And it's because if, you know, and I used to study martial arts and we used to have this thing, if I can upset you, I can control you. So the number one thing is to be able to stay calm. And I think a great thing to do, you know, like we always talk about like, okay, like I live in California. So if you, you know, how to prepare for an earthquake or you have to prepare for.

Justin Shelley (44:42)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jocelyn King (44:55)
a fire, what would you evacuate if you had to leave your house? We do all these things around physical security. Where is an AED machine in case somebody needs one? But we don't talk about, let's do some drills on this. So if you could sit down on a Saturday afternoon with your elders and just say, okay, so let's say this happens, what would you do? And then you walk them through, in fact, this is what you should do.

because we're really good at repeating something, a pattern, once we've established the habit. So you want to help them establish the habit and have it be that they'll text you or they'll do this or they'll call that pre-programmed bank number. And when you show them what to do, they're much more likely to do that when they're activated than to try to figure it out. So that's my biggest advice. And then also, of course, freeze their credit and use a password manager. And if you do those things,

Justin Shelley (45:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Jocelyn King (45:48)
Here's the thing, they'll be 20 to 50 times safer than they are right now if you just do those simple steps I just said.

Justin Shelley (45:55)
Yeah.

I love it. Jocelyn, listen, the clock is our enemy today. ⁓ I wish we could, I'm going to say this, I'm going to wrap up with this. This is a subject that needs more attention and more resources. And I'm going to personally commit to doing something. And I don't have that answer right now, but I'm just going to tell you that more needs to be done. And I'm, I'm committing publicly to doing that. So thank you, Jocelyn, so much for being here for all the work that you do. ⁓ how would people get ahold of you they want to use some of your resources, you've got online courses, you've got all kinds of stuff.

Jocelyn King (46:16)
I love that.

Yeah,

and I've got a weekly podcast of just basic tips that everybody should know. So come to SmarterOnlineSafety.com or the Smarter Online Safety YouTube channel or podcast. And we have a lot of free resources and things you can avail yourself of so you can be smarter and safer online.

Justin Shelley (46:25)
How do they get a hold of you? Absolutely.

Perfect. Jocelyn King, the queen of online safety. Thank you again for being here. Mario, as always, thank you for being here. Appreciate your time too. All right guys, we'll sign off now and see you next week. Take care.

Mario Zaki (46:43)
Thank you.

Thank you.