Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Anne-Lyse Wealth: This is the Dreamers Podcast episode 122. Today is October 24th, 2023.
Serge Ngatta: And so the way their system works, at least what I've seen from this researcher um, in cybersecurity Georgia State University, um, Thank you. They have kind of like a system of two phones where, one phone is actually their FaceTime capture, right?
And the second phone is using the AI to change that, person, right? So now I look like me when doing a FaceTime, but on a phone that is, communicating with you, I might look like Brad Pitt or like Denzel or something, and it's just AI, right? And so you think that you're talking to this very attractive person and
I make myself sound like you have a Latino accent. Right? And so whatever I'm saying when I'm talking, the A. I. Is picking that up and translating that into a Latino accent. So essentially, you think you have a conversation with one person, but it's just totally fake, It's the same thing that, in a in the last few years, we've heard about deep fakes.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: Hello, welcome to the dreamers podcast. I'm your host, Annie Zwelf. And I'm so excited that you're here for another episode. And today I have an amazing guest on the show, a very special guest. As a matter of fact. Today's guest is Serge Mugada is a global product leader with over 15 years of multi faceted experience in product sales and marketing.
Serge is an active member of the digital identity fraud prevention and regulatory compliance community. He served as a senior director of product portfolio management for one of the top three credit organizations in the world. And in his past roles, he helped transform customer experience at Wells Fargo bank.
And develop innovating dealer solutions at ADP dealer services. Surge holds an MBA with a concentration in strategy, marketing, and operations. as well as a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, a bachelor's degree in accounting, and he holds multiple certifications in product management, blockchain, and analytics.
Serge is passionate about financial literacy inclusion in underserved communities, and a lifelong learner. Today Serge will teach us a few things to help us protect our financial identity Serge is also my husband, so I'm excited for today's episode.
If you might remember remember episode 50 of the podcast season two, where, uh, we talked about corporate finances, but I'm excited to have him back on the show to discuss a very serious matter that we should all pay attention to if we are serious about building wealth.
Serge Ngatta, say welcome back.
Serge Ngatta: Yeah. It sounds good. I think I was there for what episode 50 when we're celebrating that. So happy to be back. Thank you for having me.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: Yes, for sure. I'm excited to talk about some of the stuff that you warned me about all the time.
know, you're an expert in digital identity and cyber security. And, I just want to start with the basics. What exactly is digital identity, and why should we pay attention to it?
Serge Ngatta: Absolutely, I think that's a good question. That's kind of the basis of, e commerce, right?
And digital identity essentially is how we show up online, as we've all experienced throughout COVID, a lot of the business and the activities that we do, or we used to do in person, have migrated online. Think about things like answer the cart, like how we shop for groceries, right? I would have never thought that, know, we'd use an app and actually get groceries delivered, but basically, uh, your digital identity is how you show up online and how you are able to, represent yourself online to purchase or to make transaction or to interact with anybody in a digital ecosystem.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: so we've all heard of identity And I'd love to talk about financial identity theft today.
Serge Ngatta: So financial identity theft, uh, essentially is when, fraudsters or scammers are able to get access to your information and represent themselves as you online, right?
And so now because they have your information, they're able to. take on the credit cards, know, open accounts, you know, contract loans and et cetera, and they're essentially perpetrating your identity. And so they're going to take advantage of all of these financial tools, but you are going to be left with the bag because it's going to be your identity that's going to be impacted.
And so essentially that's what identity theft is. It's when somebody, steals your identity and does nefarious things with it
Anne-Lyse Wealth: online. Okay. So, on this show, we'd like to talk about wealth building. So I would definitely love to hear more from this context, but what are some common ways that cyber criminals target individuals to access their digital information and financial assets?
Thank you.
Serge Ngatta: Great question. and that's actually kind of scary because in the world that we live in today, we are given up so much of that information for free, to those scammers potentially without even knowing. Um, so essentially, The basic attack is what we call phishing, and phishing is basically those emails or those SMS text that you've received from time to time from people that you don't know, right, asking you to click on a link or to, know, complete an application, or they wanted to ship something to you, but your address is incomplete.
So go ahead and click on the link and complete your address. and there's many ways to do that, right? So These thieves and these scammers pretend to be somebody that you trust. To collect that information from you. I think one of the most popular, uh, ways of, phishing scams is the Nigerian Prince email.
I think everybody's familiar with that, right? receive an email from a Nigerian Prince who told you that he inherited a whole bunch of money. But he needs your help to put the money out of his country. And so he needs your information so he can send you some money. And you get to keep a percentage of that, right?
And some people always fall for that. Still to this day, still to this day, still to this day, it's, it's all about being educated about it. Right. And so there's still people who are falling for it, but nowadays, these scammers, and these fraudsters I've gotten even, uh, better at it with tools like, artificial intelligence and et cetera.
So, essentially. Everywhere where you are disclosing personal information. So think about social media, right? Like, we share so much on Facebook on instagram on tech talk about ourselves, that they can always, you get that information kind of triangulate that back to your identity. and.
other things like other services that we get online, sometimes you have to create an account where you have to give a whole lot of information. So think about, I don't know, you want to, sign up for open table and just be able to make reservations to go on dates with your spouse, I mean, they ask you to fill up a form where you're sending your information now these companies have to protect your information, but they can also be targeted, right?
They can be breached frosters can get that information through, those type of means as well. So there's many ways, but ultimately, it's all about just understanding what you're putting out there about yourself.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: So you said that we share so much information that, you can be used to steal And you said we share that on social media. think most dreamers right now are not thinking that they are putting themselves at risk. So what are some of the things that we are sharing online? That can be damaging.
Serge Ngatta: So I'll give you an example.
a friend of mine a couple of, years ago, uh, was so proud of his daughter just getting her learner's permit. he put a picture of a learner's permit, online. Right? it was just in. The spirit of sharing with his community, right? He's thinking that everybody in his network is his friend and, they're close people to him.
So he's comfortable sharing that information with it. But the thing that you don't realize is it belongs now to Facebook, right? That image belongs to Facebook and they can do whatever they want with it. And so anybody who's on Facebook, Could potentially have access to it depending on if you are understanding your privacy settings, And when you're posting that picture, are you only allowing your friends to see it? Or are you making it public, There's so many nuances when we're sharing information now online that we have to be mindful of that. So that's an example.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: So for that specific example, I guess the best practice would have been to, you outside of not posting it at all to, I guess, mark off the, information.
Serge Ngatta: On the permit. Absolutely. So, what you have on your driver license on your permit is your name, your address, your date of birth, your height, your eye colors, Like, whatever classification. So, name, address, date of birth, those are what we call personal identifiable information,
Like, so we know that it's you when we see that information. And so anybody who has that. Think about it, right? that's the basis for most of the applications. They just want to know who you are, so what your name is, right? Where do you live, what your address is, and how old are you? Are you eligible for those services?
So with those three pieces of information already, I got a whole lot that I can do with it, Like now I just need to add maybe a social security number and boom, I can steal your identity.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: That's scary. you talked about artificial intelligence and how today people are using that to also, commit financial fraud.
I would love to hear more about that, but know, I wanted to share something that happened to me recently, right? know, I, I was traveling, something happened, during my travel. I don't even remember exactly.and I reached out to air friends, you I called customer service and they weren't very receptive. So friend of mine suggested that I reach out to them on Twitter because he had been able to, know, find success that way.
So he said, yeah, just reach out to them and tag them and you'll see they'll be responsive. So that's what I did. I went on Twitter, I posted, the issue tag air friends. And next thing I know, I get a reply, right? So they replied to the thread When they replied to the thread, it said contact us, send us a DM and we'll, try to resolve the situation.
We are sorry. So everything seemed normal, But then, when I DM them, they asked for very simple things that you would honestly give away. Like, what is your name? What is your confirmation number? And, you what is the issue? So I give them my name, confirmation number, and the issue. and then they ask for my phone number.
So I give them my phone number. And next thing, you know, I think the next day someone called me and the person on the phone asked me to explain the issue and he apologized that basically, prior to me reaching out on Twitter, Air France hadn't been able to solve the issue, but he said that they were going to take care of it.
And so he was like, Hey, I'm just going to send you a link, which by the way, they've done multiple times. You they send you a link to fill out some information. That's right. He said, I'm going to send you a link to fill out some information and I was like, okay, so then I received the link and I didn't click on it.
I saw something that I didn't recognize. It wasn't an Air France website, but I wasn't familiar and I can't even remember the name of the app. I wasn't familiar with that app. while I was on the phone with him, I asked him, cause I was like, okay, this is weird because you know, I'm very careful about my information.
okay, how do I know that you are actually from Air France? he told me, how would I know that you have this issue? How would I have your phone number? And it all made sense. And I said, all right, let me call you back. I went back, sorry to make this long story.
I'm trying to make it as short as possible, but this is actually important so that people can realize like how far these people are willing to go. That's right. Go back on Twitter. I, reached out to them again saying, Hey, someone contacted me. I get a response. Yes, it's us. This this is the process and something just didn't seem right.
So I went and I, searched the name of the app that they wanted me to use. And I realized that it was a money transfer app. Why would an airline? Send me a link to a money transfer app. So I already know the next step would've been to gather my information to send me That's right. a wire transfer and then boom, now they have access to my information, So I went back and I looked on Twitter and everything seemed fine, but then I clicked on the message and I realized that I had reached out to Air France and the address was, I think US Air France. But then this. reply to my thread came from us, that Air France.
So really I missed the dots. And that's when I realized that I was basically the guy wanted to scam me, this is crazy. Because if I wasn't aware, because I mean, clearly you talk to me about this stuff all the time, I could have gotten scammed.
Serge Ngatta: Absolutely. And that's what's very, very.
Frightening, right? About this whole situation because they're so sharp with it that, you they'll just introduce a dot or a dash or like a special character into a name that you're already familiar with. And you won't even notice it, right? Like, the normal, bank email is. customer service at bank of america.
com, right? They'll put customer dot service at us bank, that america. com and you wouldn't even notice those things because human eye is not trained to catch those things. and they do that all the time. They impersonate people that you follow. that was one of the big issues with social media and this whole identity verification, right?
Like the blue check. they used to give it up to people who were celebrities and stuff. Ultimately, I think at the peer to peer level, there needs to be identity verification on social media so that you know that you're actually talking to a real human being. And I think they're starting introducing those type of things, but you have to pay for it.
So, which is a different business model where I'm like, okay, why would I pay to, tell you that I am me, for a free service? So, it's not quite... well put together yet in terms of how social media is tackling this problem, but this is something that they need to do. They need to ensure that within their membership, they can differentiate between real human beings, bots and all of those fake accounts that are just perpetrating and committing fraud.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: there's a lot of work to be done because even with verified, the blue check, um, luckily I got mine without paying for it. but still people get scammed, you know, I've worked with people who have like big followings and still they're verified, but their followers still get scammed.
there's definitely a lot, a lot more work, uh, that can be done there, but tell me more about. you hinted at that, like how fraudsters are using AI now to commit financial fraud.
Serge Ngatta: Absolutely. so that's probably scariest thing out of them all, right? Cause that's the prospect for the future.
I mean, since last year, chat GPT just exploded on the scene and this year is the buzzword, right? We probably at the top of the hype cycle when it comes to AI. Everybody's doing AI and the fraudsters and the scammers are probably the first adopters of this artificial intelligence technology because now with AI, they can do so many different things.
Right? as we earlier, right? The basis for scamming and committing fraud or identity theft is to make you believe that I am a trusted agent. Person for you to interact with, and then from that interaction with you, I try to steal your identity, right? It's called social engineering for people who are field.
now, with AI tools, the social engineering capabilities have exploded
Anne-Lyse Wealth: Yeah. So
Serge Ngatta: call you at least, right? And, while you're picking up, pretend that I'm calling somebody else, right? But only purpose for calling you is to record your voice, I want to record your voice so I can train my AI model with your voice. So I'll make sure that I'm calling you, acting like it's a fake number and, I'll get you to talk for maybe like five, 10 seconds, as long as it needs for the AI to just capture your voice.
And from that model, now I can just go and create conversation with other people, leveraging your voice. I can train my AI. And I can sound like you online. But with my AI, I'll sound just like you. So can you imagine how scary that would be right?
Like for a parent, somebody impersonated a child, children's voice or like, your siblings with those tools now I can get you to give me some information.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: know, the other day you told me about something that goes even a step further.
Where you think like, I'm talking to search. I'm looking at. So it's actually a
Serge Ngatta: search. That's right. That's right. That's right. So this is amazing. Cause it's something that's called pig butchering. Right. And part of the romance scam. the romance scam is,
Anne-Lyse Wealth: are a form of fraud and scam that typically target people who are looking for relationships online. All right. So think about sites like match dot com, bumble and all of those sites where people go meet folks online. Essentially, good old scam where you think that you met the love of your life, but it's really a scammer on the other end who's pretending to be in love with you, uh, for the whole purpose of, asking you for money.
the way you explained this to me is that I could be having a FaceTime call for instance with you or a FaceTime video call.
And I'm thinking I'm talking to search because I'm seeing you and I'm seeing your mouth move, but it's someone else how do they do that?
Serge Ngatta: Okay. So. So they're leveraging a I again, right? So with the artificial intelligence, they can create an image of an attractive. Young man or young woman, depending on who you are interfacing with, and they can use the as well to mimic, like a foreign voice or an exotic voice, like an accent.
I think about a, Eastern European accent or like a Latino accent, right? they can create all of that. And so the way their system works, at least what I've seen from this researcher um, in cybersecurity Georgia State University, um, Thank you. They have kind of like a system of two phones where, one phone is actually their FaceTime capture, right?
And the second phone is using the AI to change that, person, right? So now I look like me when doing a FaceTime, but on a phone that is, communicating with you, I might look like Brad Pitt or like Denzel or something, and it's just AI, right? And so you think that you're talking to this very attractive person and
I make myself sound like you have a Latino accent. Right? And so whatever I'm saying when I'm talking, the A. I. Is picking that up and translating that into a Latino accent. So essentially, you think you have a conversation with one person, but it's just totally fake, It's the same thing that, in a in the last few years, we've heard about deep fakes.
Right. I don't know if you've heard about the concept of deep fakes. Deep fakes are just like videos that maybe you've seen in the past, that were doctored with AI. the real popular one that I remember was one of Kobe Bryant shooting a free throw. And when he shot the free throw, he started moonwalking.
Right. I was like, I've never seen Kobe Bryant moonwalk on on a basketball course. So like, there's no way this can be real, but if you look at it and you're not paying attention. you can get fooled, right? Especially if you're think about, we're talking about social media earlier, right? we're getting a lot of information through social media and our friends are sending us clips and videos through social media that we don't take the time necessarily to go and verify.
if you are just taking this video in and not doing your due diligence, right, you might believe that, know, you actually say that. And so those are kind of like the challenges of deep fakes and what AI is actually able to do to get back into the romance cam.
They're pretending to be, you somebody that you would potentially fall in love with online and. While they're doing that, they just want to get to build trust with you over time, and they'll tell you that, yeah, they want to come see you, but they can't afford it, right? they have, family issues, they have, medical issues, they have financial issues, and they need you to help if you're really their, soulmate or person, right?
Like, you would want to help, right? And that's what these victims fall victim under, right? Like, they start empathizing and, really loving those people, getting an emotional attachment to those people and they send their money out, you know, and they do that nonstop.
And so it's very, sad because they really target like older people, people who are like, alone and really want companionship. it's one of those things that AI is definitely going to have a significant impact on. and I'm really, kind of sad about that.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: there's a lot of talks about AI, obviously AI has been around for a long time, but now, it's the development. When you, hear things like chat GPT, it can be great, but there's also like, obviously some drawbacks, which, know, some of the things that you talked about are major drawbacks of artificial intelligence.
So, you obviously you work in this space, you, have all this knowledge and we only have a certain amount of time on the show to talk and, you you've warned us about some of the ways that we can essentially get scammed online. I would love to hear. from you, what are some of the ways that we can safeguard our personal information so that we don't get scammed?
Serge Ngatta: very good question I think it all starts with what I call digital hygiene. You just need to start developing safe online practices. basic one is to use strong and unique passwords. I think that's just like the foundation, right? Whenever you are creating an account, don't use the same password that you use for your prior accounts, because what happens is that if you do get hacked or if somebody steals your identity and they have your password for one account, now they can just go to all of the other accounts.
And because you're using the same password, it's just easy for them to have access to everything and wipe you clean. So I would say, start there. my strategies, I don't even create a password anymore. I mean, I think Google and a lot of the, the online tools have gotten so good at suggesting passwords for you.
and they suggest password that are long, that are complex. So use that suggestion make sure that I save it in my password manager. So using a password manager is another. thing that people can do the other thing that I would encourage folks to do when they're signing up for account online is something called multi factor authentication, um, to break it down for you is when they ask you for your phone number or your email so that they can send you a passcode, Because now it becomes a failsafe method if know, your password is not working or whatever, they can send you this and by you entering that code, they can validate that it is you. And you can always recover your accounts like that. and then just having safe browsing habits, right? I think this one is a little bit more difficult for people to do just, Understanding phishing emails.
If you see an email from somebody or someone that you don't know, or an organization that you don't know, and it's asking for sensitive information, don't be quick to give it up. All right. just make sure that you check, you do some validation, just like you did with the air friends, you know, Twitter account, right on X, you just went and clicked on it and you realize that it was a different account.
It was just written differently. So just having the diligence to just double check things that you receive online. Same thing for SMS is right. Like receive a bunch of SMS. That's another trend that we're seeing a lot of right now, people leveraging SMS to send you just fraudulent emails or fringeless texts with links that are you know, fraudulent and can allow them pick up your identity.
Serge Ngatta: and they target a lot of business owners, right. Cause they know business owners have revenue and, you can be good targets. So. don't click on those and definitely make sure that protecting yourself. And then lastly, social media risk, right?
Just oversharing, it's, it's detrimental to you in the long term, Because you're just essentially giving information to people and it can piece the puzzle, Facebook has been around for like, what, 16 years or something like that, So can you imagine how much information you've shared on Facebook, right?
If you're someone who's on there every day and just sharing information, I mean, now people have a 16 year track record of your life. And they can piece that together and obtain information that you may not necessarily want to share. and I know wasn't the intended purpose because, you know, we wanted to create community with social media.
But those are some of the nefarious, you know, outcomes that are coming out of it. I will say those are what you can do online in terms of digital hygiene. in terms of proactive measures, what I would encourage everyone to do is to monitor that credit. now, since COVID, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion are making your credit report free, and they update it weekly, you should always check on your credit report to make sure that there's no new accounts or no new trade lines that are appearing on there that you didn't sign up for, because those are good indication of, know, credit theft, identity theft. the other thing you want to do is to put freeze on your credit.
Because if, for instance, this year, you know that you're not going to want to open an account, you're not going to want to refinance anything, right? You're not going to go out to try to, sign up on a new financial account, freeze your credit because what that, prescribes the financial institution that someone comes in and try to apply on your behalf, they have to call or email or contact you however you decided to get contacted on the credit freeze.
And you can catch fraudsters trying to steal your identity because you put a credit freeze on there now. People need to be mindful that the credit freeze is only good for one year, right? So every year if you're not contracting credit that year just put a credit freeze on your account I think it's easy and obviously Document safety like so you want to safeguard the social documents like your social security cards your kids birth certificates I mean your passport your driver licenses your permits, please under Any circumstances do not post these online, right?
Those are government issued identity, documents. And, know, this is kind of how you prove that you are who you are. And so you don't want anyone to have access to that and perpetrate your identity online. So those are kind of a few things that I want to share with your audience. I mean, there's definitely more, but I think this is good start.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: That's definitely a good start and we might have to do a part two. So dreamers, if you want a comment. All right. So Sarge, know, I always end the podcast with a round of rapid fire questions. the challenge here is to respond as fast as you can, in five words or less, describe your definition of a wealthy life,
Serge Ngatta: a wealthy life in five words or less, that's tough, creating unforgivable memories,
Anne-Lyse Wealth: All right. What's the best book you've read recently?
Serge Ngatta: Atomic Habits. I really like that. I think it was a kind of one that reinforced the little things that you can do every day to create habits that will, provide long lasting results. it's a reminder again that, it's not always about the big bang at the end, right?
It's the journey, it's the little steps that you take every day that get you to where you're trying to go. What's
Anne-Lyse Wealth: one part of your daily routine you can't live without?
Serge Ngatta: I think the gym is probably, my, my outlet, right. I love going to the gym and playing basketball and shooting around.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: What's your favorite financial tool or app?
Serge Ngatta: I love Mint still, to this day, or, personal capital, right. Or empower as they're rebranding now,
Anne-Lyse Wealth: If you had to pick one thing that you did to improve your wealth, what would it be?
Serge Ngatta: I would say just the budget, Like I think budgeting is one of those things where you kind of reign in your finance a little bit and you allocate every dollar to an activity and that way, know, nothing is just left to chances.
So What do you want your legacy to be? that's always a tough one. I mean, I want people to remember me as a loving father, husband, friend, um, individual, and always there to support his people.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: you for being with us today and sharing. Your insights, honestly, even though we talk about this stuff all the time, I learned quite a bit today and, I kind of wish that, we had more time,
Serge Ngatta: if you want to do part two, we can certainly do that.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: So until then, please tell the dreamers where they can find you.
Serge Ngatta: Well, I am on, uh, LinkedIn at, Serge and Gata. You can find me there.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. All right. That was Serge and Gada. so it's such an insightful interview, warning us about the dangers of, financial theft, how to protect ourselves and the new risks that are coming with all these new AI, Basically schemes that they frosters fraudsters are developing.
yeah, if you like this episode, please make sure that you subscribe and, stay tuned for this next video. I think you're going to like a lot. All right. That's it for today. right. Thank you