 Good morning everyone. At least I think it is. I'm going to talk about identity theft, or your identity, or how to create an identity. And this is based on a research project I've done, so my disclaimer is, don't ever try to do anything like this yourself and I have no responsibilities for what's possible to do. What I'm trying to show is methods, identity, these are using to steal identities and create identities. And my research is basically on creating identity with a stolen identity or with your identity. It depends how anonymous identity you would like to create. I mean, I guess everybody in here has a cell phone, right? And you know, pretty much when they register for a cell phone, you have to give your social security number. I mean, how many entities have collected your social security number out there? Are you guys using accounting services? I mean, accountants are not really experts in computer security. I mean, I've seen many accountants kind of having free for wireless network in their office. You know, and guess what? Everybody has social security numbers in the database, credit card numbers. I mean, you can have a field day in an office like that, and there's really not many regulations. Regulating small accounting offices of the data they collect. And you know, they just go by the business and do the accounting, but they know nothing about security. So it's very interesting actually. I'm going to try to keep this talk kind of high level. I'm not going to get very technical with it. I mean, I'll be happy to answer questions afterwards. I don't know exactly how long it's going to take. I got 50 minutes of this presentation and this is the first time I'm doing it. So I may rush through the first slides and basically feel it out how it goes. Probably half of you guys are probably asleep today anyway. After a lot of partying last night, like me, I regretfully standing up here today actually. Okay, this is going to be an overview of what I will talk about and what identities are important to you. I mean, what is an identity? Really, what is your identity? If you really have to sit back and think what identity is, is it just a number that you have? Is it you? Something you have? Something you are, something you know? I mean, something you are, fingerprints, looks, biometrics, anything like that. Something you have, the passport, driver license. So I guess something you know will be your social security number. The US government is very trying to keep a closed card on so nobody can copy it and you can do a lot of damage after somebody taking your social security number. Social security number is not necessarily very difficult to get either. I'm going to show you that later on in this talk. I mean, why does somebody want an alternative identity? I mean, probably the biggest reasons for it is identity thefts through financial gain. I mean, you've seen all the wonderful emails you get today about phishing and stuff like that. You know, that's a type of identity theft scam. And surprisingly, people still fall for it, but it happens. The other one would probably be somebody trying to steal somebody's identity just to be able to work here. I mean, immigrants that can't get a green card, something like that. Or a revenge. I mean, can you imagine somebody stealing your social security number and then apply for death certificate? Turn you in as deceased. Believe me, it's a lot harder to become alive after you died, but you can. It's a very good way to get revenge on somebody. It takes quite a while for a person to come alive again. The methods are going to talk kind of in depth about creating and stealing more. Inheriting is kind of an interesting way. And you can see that sometimes in small magazines, not magazines, but one of those free papers, distributions that wanted a terminally ill person, wanted for business partnership called this number, yada, yada, yada. And what it is, is somebody basically looking for somebody terminally ill to sell his or her identity to that person. The person's going to die has nothing to gain out of it. And the key is for that person not to turn in the death certificate. If you can manage, that person can manage dying basically, and you can take over as social security number, you have a new identity. That's inheritance. These things are getting a lot harder after September 11th, naturally, but these are methods being used. I mean, the old methods for identity thefts out there are getting new identities, but roaming around graveyards and going through birth records of babies that died and taking identities that way, they don't really work at all. I mean, these are a lot of scam artists are going to say out there trying to sell books and stuff like that, and show methods that are very old that worked maybe 20 years ago or something. Okay, stealing identities. Probably the holy grail of the stealing identity will be your social security number. This is the first thing somebody would get to get access to other identifications, like a driver license, like the birth certificates, diplomas, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's not as hard as you think to get somebody's social security number, and I'm going to show you methods identity thieves will use to get your social security number. Starting out, if identity thief is trying to steal an identity, they will hopefully try to find somebody that looks a little much like the thief itself. I mean, you cannot really, if you say a large black afro woman and you are like a 19-year-old male, white male, that wouldn't quite pass for an identity. So you kind of pick somebody in the same gender, age, looks, everything like that. That may be a little bit difficult, but after you've found somebody, you can basically use mailbox camping, which is basically you can put somebody's address and collect the mails, do some dumpster diving type, and what you're trying to do is get as much information about the person as you possibly can get, like banking accounts, phone bills, I mean, all kinds of stuff, free credit card applications. I mean, most people work during the day. Some people, most, whatever, they don't work out of the house. I mean, they work somewhere else. The mail comes in a mailbox during the day, and nobody watches your mailbox. A lot of people lives in apartments, lives in the neighborhoods, they have like a big central mailbox pile sitting there, and you can get the mail from there. Some of them have locks, but you know, you beat the lock on here, look how easy to pick a lock. I mean, you can pick a lock in two, three seconds, especially one of these locks, it's not very hard to pick. And, you know, you watch the mailbox for several days, you may get a credit card application, and you may get a bill or something like that, and it would generally show the four last digits of your social security number. You may think that, you know, no, it's no big deal. Four last digits, no big deal, my social security number. It actually is a very big deal. It's the only unique numbers in your social security numbers the last four digits. If you look at the card or your social security number, that's a card, but if you look at your social security number, the fourth last digit is the unique number. The three first digits tells me where you registered your social security number. Basically, if I know when you are born, most likely I can figure out your first three digits in your social security number. I already have, or the identity thief already have your last four digits. Now the identity thief has your first three digits. Only the two middle digits are missing. And they are called the group number. And the group number goes in sequence. And basically the odd numbers 0 to 9 are the first number being assigned. And then the even numbers 10 to 96, then even numbers 2 to 98, and after that odd numbers 11 to 99 being assigned. So you can pretty much enumerate it. And the highest group number is a published number by social security. So you can know from each region which is the highest assigned group number. So it's not necessarily not having 99 guesses to guess the social security number of somebody. It's not less than that. Some states are larger. They will have several areas like Georgia is like 259, 260, I think, or something like that. So if you look at the list here, whatever it is, which state you're from, you can see pretty much they would jive what you're at a social security number at. After you have the three first digits and the four last digits, it's very easy to write a little script program or something and verify the social security number. There's services out there that you can actually verify a social security number against the name. That's for tax reasons. Because you need to know you're not hiring an illegal alien, you need to verify the sort of genuine taxpayer you have hired at you. You can use a social security site to do that at. However, it's a difficult process to register yourself as an employer, but it can be done. There are other services out here. This is just some internet site I found out there that does that. And you need some minimal information about it. It takes a little script that basically brute forces the three, the number, the two digit number, the area number in there, and you will have a social security number from this person, only knowing the last four digits. Not very difficult, is it? Okay, the other way is to get social security numbers. Some are maybe even easier than that. You can use social engineering. I think most of you guys have at least sometimes gotten a call from your bank. If you sit in the mailbox, you collect a credit card statement. Okay, I know what bank you're using. I know what your transaction was last month that comes in on a monthly basis. I may not know the rest of it, but I just called you and said, hey, I'm from Bank, so and such. And I want to verify a few transactions happened to you, credit card, in the last couple of days. But to be able to speak to you, I need to know your mother's maiden name. So, of course, the person says my mother's name, the name is yada, yada, yada. And then I need to know the last digit, the social security number. And the person gives away the last digit, the social security number. You can ask three or four other questions if you want to, depending on how much information you want from that person. But just for a little source of engineering, you will have the person's vital information just from a simple phone call. So if a bank calls you and asks you for what transaction to be done, don't give out any information. Call back the bank yourself and then ask what happened to my transactions. It's a very common mistake and it's a very easy way to social engineer yourself to a social security number this way. So just keep in mind on that. There are actually many internet sites out there. Many of them are being, I think they're going to shut down or something because they'll be less and less of them after September 11th. But these are some samples I've seen. And they basically will find a social security number for you. They say they require some legitimate reason why you should get somebody's social security number or something like that. They can also make something up. And they charge like 50 bucks or something like that. And you can use an anonymous internet identity or some ways to get it. And guess what? You will get that person's social security number through a service. And it's very interesting. I mean, I'm sure most of you guys have heard of a Zaba search or some of these things out there. That's kind of interesting actually. But I have noticed that these sites are decreasing. But it's a very high interest in finding individuals this way. Okay, now we got your social security number or identity theft. Thief got your social security number. After you got the number, you need a couple more means of identifications. A problem next step in the chain for a thief to obtain identity is to get the driver license. It's probably not a very good idea for a person to go in to the local DMV office where the real owner or social security person is and registered under that name because many times that person's picture is on file or something like that. So it's probably not a good idea. You may have a lot of questions to answer why you're not looking exactly the same as the picture. So it's not really the best. Some people make fake driver licenses and it was a case that I read on some websites a while ago and there was a gentleman or a guy in Iran or something that created a fake identity using Brad Pitt's picture. I don't think you should use Brad Pitt's picture. I don't think you should steal any famous person's identity. That's quite difficult. But a lot of people are not very careful with what they're doing. But getting a driver license is not necessarily very difficult. I mean the services out there will not be in the United States. You don't find them there because they are shut down here as they're coming up. They're really crappy or they're being shut down very fast. There are several services in Europe or in Asia available. And again this is just some service I found on the web. And actually I had somebody tell me about it. I didn't just find this one. But they make driver licenses with the barcode working in the back. So you basically can run it through barcode scanner and it looks completely genuine. It's a genuine license. However I would not try to give this license to an officer. I'm not sure how good it really is. But there are services out there that does produce realistic looking licenses. They call novelty licenses. And they're just supposed to be used as practical jokes I guess or something like that. I don't know. But they're available. The scary or simple is to get. Typically a license like this costs between 100 and 200 dollars for a good license. A lot of times you probably get stiffed one or two times before you get a license but it really is very very good. I mean it's to be expected. I mean most people that get one of these licenses may not be an identity thief. It could be some teenager just want to get into a bar or something. I mean if it looks real enough. After you get the license, a fake driver license, the identity thief will try to get a next type of identity which will be the birth certificate. It's probably one of the easiest ones to get. It's not easy to counterfeit a birth certificate because it's like embossing on it and all kinds of stuff. But it's very easy to apply for one. And again to apply for birth certificates depends from state to state. In some states they only send the birth certificates to the person where the person is registered at that address. But if you do mailbox camping or something who cares. You're watching the mailbox. You know when a mailman is coming in you can just take the mail away from their address. If some states don't require that or you can even use the services to do this thing. And here's one of these services and all they require from you is a copy of a driver license. Well it's a copy of a fake driver license but the loss is that. I mean it's very easy and they're very hard to prove that's a fake driver license since it's a copy anyway. So you get a genuine looking, you actually get a genuine birth certificate. Now the identity thief has pretty much all the means to become you or whoever identity this person is trying to become. There are other means of identities out there. I mean the degrees and certificates. You can get fake degrees. You can get something called life experience degrees. This one I really like. Rockville University. They are endorsed and proven a genuine educational institution about two bodies. If you want to check those body sites, both of these bodies that endorse this university. It's kind of funny how the web interface looks exactly the same. You know it's really interesting. Gee, wow. Life experience degree is a degree that you can basically, you prove that you have worked in the field for so many years. What I mean by proving you're right by three statements. I've been a neurosurgeon for whatever, neurosurgeons for whatever and done so and such. And then you send them 600 bucks and you get a PhD in neurosurgery. Well, I kind of took the liberty to Google this university. You'd be surprised how many people are graduates from this entity. I kind of want to send them an email and say, gee, fancy you got all these degrees. But it can be done. In some states they can really track you down. But in many cases you can get by with this thing as a real degree. It's kind of scary actually. I mean 600 dollars for a PhD. That's a hell of a lot better than go six years in college and pay like 200,000 dollars. You don't know anything but that's beside a point. You still do neurosurgery when you're done, right? Okay. After this, the next thing brings up the next chapter of this thing. This is actually when the stuff is starting to get really interesting. And it has to do with your passport. I mean how many people in here have a passport? Wow, that's a lot. You seem to have spoken to a local bingo parlor back. There was only like two people who had one. But generally if you go in an area that's better rural, people not traveling, you find maybe 20% of the people will have passports. I mean I assume this is a very international audience in here. You find a lot of people with passports. And seriously, if you want to protect your identity, get yourself a passport. Because if you don't have a passport, somebody can get the passport in your name. It's very easy because that's the only passport that exists. That's why it's so hard to get a driver license because just about everyone has a driver license. But very few people have a passport. So it's something to think about. It doesn't cost much to get one and they're valid for like 10 years or something. But that's the method for somebody to create an entity. It's like stealing an entity and then use passports to create one. Which I will show how the identity to go by to do this in a second right here. And that is the second part of this presentation right here. And oh, I'm doing pretty good in Taiwan, too. Cool. Okay, the passports. They have benefits. Well, I get a second passport. It has benefits and it has disadvantages. So you need to be aware of both. I mean, something very common with passports, which the United States is trying to shut down on is, the passport traveler is individuals traveling on different passports trying to be anonymous. A lot of times for business or tax evasion, that's typically what it's being used for. Basically, those individuals have several nationalities in several countries. Most of the time they travel under the proper identity, but under different passport. However, some of these individuals have different names on different passports, which makes them nearly truly anonymous. Which the second part is being anonymous. The other one is called safe travel. I mean, being American, can be kind of difficult when you travel today. I mean, there have been incidents you've seen in the paper, and in bowling and stuff, they find all the American tourists and shoot them all. I mean, that's not a good thing. So a lot of Americans wanting to be able to travel under different passports, just to protect themselves. Especially with travel to countries that don't like Americans. By the way, I am American too, and even if I have Swedish accent. Okay, that's a second copy of that slide. Alright, the easiest way to get a passport is to use something called a camouflage passport. A camouflage passport is a type of passport from a country that existed, but do not exist anymore. Like Censibar, Nugrenata, Rhodesia, what have you. This passport looks real, feels real, they're real in every aspect. You can buy them from any services. They cost between $400 and $700. And basically why people use them is to be anonymous. They will not use these passports to go through customs or passport controls. They are trained to filter these type of passports out, but for opening bank accounts, getting driver license, even you can get driver license with them. Similar things like that. Getting into bars, I guess, if you were under 21, and other things like that. The other option is to actually create an identity. I mean, to get real foreign passport, I mean, sorry. And there are countries, you can buy passports, or you can buy citizenship. I mean, every country has some kind of prize for being a citizen. And some examples I have are Argentinas and Kits, Bahamas, and many others. I mean, you probably don't want to pick a third world country in Central Africa. That may not be a good idea, but there are some very good countries out there you can pick. And top of the list would be an EU country or something like that, because that would give you a visa less travel to just about any country in the world. If you pick some Central African country, you probably can only travel within that country and nowhere else. So it may not be a good idea. Or this is like a Russian passport right here. I guess you can't travel far with that either. If you buy a passport at the country, typically, I kind of did some research, but the price to buy, if you use a service, goes anywhere on the low end from $20,000 to $50,000. I mean, it's not cheap. But that would get you a passport by purchasing it. On the low end, it would be something like $5,000. On the high end, it would be like $100,000, $250,000. But if you think about it, you can actually buy yourself a new nationality. It may not be a bad idea, especially if you load it like everybody here is. It's a great way to do taxes with it, right? But that's for the kind of people that will apply for passports in these things. You had to watch the governments, the local governments, the local governments, and say, oh yeah, we take these passports today, then they have a revolt or something, and suddenly you're not a citizen anymore. So that $100,000 you just spent, you just went out of the window. But thanks to watch for it. This slide here shows you such a service. These guys have been around for a long time. It's kind of interesting to read them. They also sell overseas banking accounts, all kinds of stuff to do. Also camouflage passports, stuff like that. Again, not cheap, but just very interesting reading. There are other ways to do it too, the exceptions. If you don't mind to join the French Foreign Legion for three years or five years, you become French. I mean, it's just a couple years of your life, right? But you are guaranteed French citizenship after you survive the French Legion. If you have Irish ancestry, you can apply for an Irish passport. That's a very interesting loophole, actually. A lot of people have Irish ancestry here in the United States, so that you can actually get an Irish passport without spending $20,000. If you have a Jewish, you can become an Israeli citizen. I don't know if anybody would want to be that today, but you can. They accept any Jews. If you want to be a monk for part of your life, there's some order I think you will see in Austria and Italy, they will accept you. And you can get citizenship in one of those countries. So there are many exceptions out there, and there are only a few samples of how you can get by blood. Yeah, very interesting, isn't it? What I'm getting at with this thing is that if you actually stole somebody's identity, if somebody stole somebody's identity that had Irish ancestry, guess what? You can go to Ireland, apply for a passport under that person's name. The person will never have any idea as a passport to begin with. You got this residence in Ireland and an Irish passport, then you change your name to whatever. Mr. Shamrock. Well, now you have a new name in Ireland and a new citizenship. You are completely anonymous. The only way you can possibly get caught if this individual that somebody stole an identity from finds out that it has a passport or something like that, it may be complications, but the chances of going to trace it back to Ireland is very, very small. There is not much communication between countries internationally. Some countries communicate more with the United States than other countries. So you can again, with this new identity, you can use your imagination, you can travel back to the United States under different passport, different name, get a different social security number, and hence you created a different identity. After this speech, this will probably not be possible anymore. And that's one of the reasons I'm doing it. But I found it very interesting that it's possible to do it. But another very interesting way that's commonly used after you travel the country, you see that also in magazines sometimes, like you can marry somebody in a country and you make a business agreement, I want to marry you for this time to obtain citizenship. You find that in the United States. It's very hard in the United States to be married to somebody, they are very suspicious here for doing that. But you will marry an American citizen, you marry somebody here for two years and you can get a green card after that. That's how it works, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to do that because a lot of people are utilizing it as a business proposal. So to pay a guy 10 grand or a girl or whatever and use it as a business then you get divorced for two years and you have a green card, after you have a green card you can get citizenship after five years. And that's kind of how it works. It's very interesting. And like I said, this is only like a research that is it possible to get an honest identity in the United States? And the answer is at this point as of two minutes ago, yes. And you know, it's interesting. That's pretty much my presentation today, if you have any questions. Based on your research, other than getting a passport if you're already legal, what do you recommend to protect your identity? Or what additional steps? There are a lot of steps to protect your identity. I mean, first of all, get yourself a passport because that's very important. Simple stuff, very, very simple stuff. When you apply for a banking account or something, don't give me your mother's maiden name. Your mother's maiden name can be Brunhilde or something like that. I mean, that's a good way to protect. Never give information away. Some banks, that's correct. But they ask for it by default. Right. Then that's exactly what you should do. Don't ever give information voluntarily. Shred your information at home. Buy a cross shredder and a strip shredder. Next question. I'm Irish Italian, so I've got double jeopardy on this thing. I already have a U.S. passport. What's the legality of having an Irish and an Italian passport at the same time? Well, if you don't travel with them at the same time, if you get caught in the customs, you have a lot of explaining to do. But you can legally actually keep a U.S. passport with another nation's passport. It's up to Ireland. I'm not sure what their legality in Ireland are or Italy or something like that. But my advice is never travel on two passports. If you search the luggage and find two passports, it's like a red flag coming up instantaneously. Okay, so just get it, keep it, put it away, and that's it. Exactly. Okay. Thanks. I've done some research on it and for Irish citizenship, because I'm of Irish ancestry, your parent or grandparent has to be born in Ireland. Not like a naturalized Irish citizen to get that. Otherwise, you have to go through the regular process to move there to get it. And then additionally, I also have Canadian citizenship. I was born in America, but grew up in Canada, so I have Canadian citizenship. And you actually can carry two passports with you. It was up until about 86. I think they said I traveled to Ireland and came back. I thought the same thing that you shouldn't have two passports with you, so I didn't bring my American passport and I almost didn't get back into America. I was traveling on my Canadian passport. It was like two days after the Gulf War 2.0 broke out. But you can have them both and the U.S. does recognize it. But just if you do travel abroad, I traveled out on my Canadian passport and I should have had my American passport to come back in. They'll want to see that. They say, why do you deserve to come back into America? Even though I had my driver's license from a state, I had to kind of prove it otherwise. That's true, actually. I just read that, too. It used to be any Irish ancestry, but it actually changed it to grandparents. I think it was, not grandparents. It was just an overview of what you can do. Italian, I think I read about that, too, actually. It's a book called G.H. Wilson. I think the guy, H.G. Wilson, made a book called the Passport Report, which is a very interesting book to read, actually. Next question. I have a problem that affects approximately 5% of the population. I actually have no way to prove what my nationality is because I'm adopted. What would be the burden of proof to say that I'm Irish or not? Well, you know, there's a lot of ways to fake yourself into anything, isn't it? But the burden of proof, I mean, they can probably... Man, you had to get some kind of proof showing it in some shape or form. I cannot answer that. I mean, if you can't show it, I mean, they're not going to give it to you. That's as simple as it is. Well, the problem, like, where I'm in is the state of Michigan. It's almost impossible to find out what your actual ancestry is, much less any other birth information that you have. So the government, by law, is preventing you from being able to do this in violation of your rights. The rule is simple. You give them the information they want, they give you the information you want. Very simple. Yeah, just a comment for that last speaker. He may be able to rely on his adoptive parents' ancestry because he may never disclose that fact that he's been adopted to another nation, which is what it would involve. I wanted to point out that you had the camouflage passports. I didn't hear you mention inserts. In a lot of cases, the places you've been may be held against you as you're traveling. So I just wanted to point out there are ways to use a mobile page within a passport and thus hide places you've been. For instance, if you're traveling from Arab nations to Israel back and forth, things like that, that may be of aid to you. I just wanted to make that comment. Okay. All right. Thank you.