Katie Norton | How to Combat Identity Theft and Hacking

Katie Norton gives individuals and businesses tips to prevent identity theft and hacking.

Transcript

Josh:   Good morning Jacksonville, and welcome to the Hard Worker with Pete, the job guy, Langlois. If you’re looking for a job or looking for any kind of candidates, this is the show you need to hear. So tune in now, now of course, and every Sunday morning at eight to answer any questions you might have about jobs, because this is your show. This expert show is your guide to everything jobs. This is a place where you can hear about new job opportunities and get free extensive career advice from local business leaders themselves. The staffing industry’s leading authority, Pete, the job guy, Langlois explores the failures and successes behind Jacksonville’s top influential individuals. He does it while discussing hard workplace issues with an honest and oh so entertaining filter. Take it away, Pete.

Pete:    Good morning all you hard workers, and welcome to Hard Worker with me, Pete the job guy. I want to congratulate all of you for making a very, very smart decision this morning. Why? Because you’re joining me, you’re joining me for a number of different reasons. Some folk like to get career advice, some people are managers who want to be effective leaders and need some tips, or some people just want to be entertained and have a little bit of fun. But I would invite each and every one of you, as I do every week, to grab a pen and pencil if you’re old school like me, and jot down some notes. If you’re a millennial like my cohost Arren, you’ll go ahead and use your device and your thumbs will be cranking out and you’ll take notes the new way. Okay?

Pete:     But the notes that you’re going to take are something that you’re going to do differently as a result of the time you spend with me, and Arren, and our guests here, every Sunday morning. You do something differently, and you’ll be all the better for it. Today, as we do every week, we have a great guest. We also have leadership tips from coach Larry. But our guest is going to talk about something that impacts each and every one of us. Like I do every week, I’m going to start off with a story and tell you something that happened to me in my life. Okay, you know I’m a car buff, I like cars. I have Essie, my 1975 drop top, powder blue Cadillac El Dorado with a white interior, white top, and I love that thing. Arren and I, this Thursday, went out to the Jack’s Beach Chamber of Commerce and we had the top down. It started raining, but we pulled over, put the top up, and then we went to the event, and it was fantastic. But I love cars. About three years ago, I went out to Emilia Island. Oh, oh, when I go to Emilia Island, guys, if you haven’t been to the new Omni Resort hotel at Emilia Island, you’re missing a real gem here. If you want a stay cation, go there. They have beautiful trees, they have bike trails, places to walk. You can fish, you can do everything, go to the beach, whatever you want. It’s beautiful there, and they redid it all. It’s kind of like you’re still in Jacksonville, but you’re kind of on an island somewhere and it’s beautiful. So Omni is beautiful. But I went out there to go to the Concord Delegance. The Concord has all kinds of beautiful cars there, beautiful, rare Ferraris, Maseratis. Even some of the old 1950s Buicks that are all redone and beautiful. I love going out there. But while I was out there, I went and I stopped to have a refreshment. It might have been an adult beverage, maybe a beer, I don’t know. But I went up, and I got one, and I gave the person, the vendor, my credit card. I didn’t think much of it, gave the person my card, and I went on about my way, I got my beer, I was refreshed, I looked at cars all day, and it was fantastic. Then about, I guess it was about a week later, I got a call, my card had been blocked, and I got a call from my bank that said there looked to be some suspicious activity on my card. Well, what had happened to me happened to a bunch of people that day. Some unscrupulous person took my credit card digits, and went on a spree, and bought a whole bunch of stuff up in New York, where I wasn’t. They spent a lot of money on my dime. They stole my credit card information. This happened again, too, one other time. My bank froze, and it’s always at the most inconvenient time.

Pete:  I was at Moe’s, buying some enchilada wrap thing, with cheese and meat on it, and I’m there getting it, and they say, your card is declined. Declined? Come on, I got … Come on. I mean, you use my card, I’m buying some kind of a meal at a fast Mexican restaurant, and unfortunately it was declined. I call, and they said there is a freeze, there is suspicious activity in your account, and someone is buying foreign currency and all this, and I don’t buy foreign currency, and I certainly wouldn’t charge foreign currency, it doesn’t make any sense. But they caught it, but another time, I don’t even know who that was that time that lifted my digits and decided to spend my money. Fortunately, the bank helped me out.

Pete:   There has been a number of different times when I look in my email inbox, and I’m sure this has happened to a lot of you folks, where there’s a prince in another country, usually from Kenya, and he has found me, and my information. I am the benefactor of this guy finding me, because he wants to wire in $20 million, US currency. This prince, god bless America, this guy wants to wire this to me, and give me a percentage of that money. Maybe like 20%. You do the math, that’s more than a big Mac and a cheeseburger for the rest of my life every day. Right? That’s a lot of, lot of money, I might be able to go to the Roots Chris, and get a broccoli, right? Because that’s a lot of money.

Pete:     So I never really responded to this prince, okay, because I thought, maybe that’s not right. But a lot of Americans do respond to this guy, and this scam, and it happens time and time again. But guess what? They get more and more sophisticated. People are out there, and they can even make it look like an email is from Apple wanting you to update your credentials. They get more slick. I’ve had friends, out of nowhere, I received an email from a friend, and it says, hey Pete, can you help me out? Someone stole my wallet, I’m stuck here in downtown Brooklyn, and I just need you to just send me about $300 and I’ll be able to get out. The email is totally out of character, but what that is, is someone hacked him. Someone got into their identity. I see on Facebook, people write, oh, share this, share this to 200 other people. All I can think of, it’s the Russians. It’s the Russians. I’m going to share this, and I’m not only going to infect myself, I’m going to give a virus to all … Well, I’m not really connected with a lot of people on Facebook, so all 80 people that have ever known me, that are in my space, I’m going to infect them by sharing this piece of thing. Guys, that’s why today, we’re fortunate to have Katie Acres on, and we’re going to introduce her in a minute. But Arren, I want to ask you.

Arren:    Yeah?

Pete:  Have you or anybody in your family, or in your network, ever had any of this weirdness and shenanigans happen to you?

Arren:    Yeah, so I’m fortunate enough to where I haven’t experienced it personally. But my husband’s brother actually had his identity taken, like his social security was taken. So now every year that he has to file taxes, it’s always a hassle. They always say that his account or his social security is flagged.

Pete:  Oh, it’s a pain, right? Once it happens-

Arren:   Yeah.

Pete:  And you’re flagged, and it sets forth all these things in motion.

Arren:   So he can’t do it.

Pete:     He can’t even file taxes.

Arren:    No, he can’t. So it’s a real big hassle, and you just got to be careful with all that information that you have.

Pete:   Oh, man. I don’t think there is anybody that’s listening right now in this program, on this wonderful Sunday morning, I don’t think there is anybody right now that hasn’t been impacted in one way, shape, or form of identity theft, or hackers getting into your system. Which brings us, right now, to our guest. You know, it just occurred to me. I said Katie Acres. I’ve known Katie for a lot of years, but it’s Katie Acres Norton. It’s Katie Norton. Katie is a certified identity theft protection specialist, guru, all that. Katie, welcome to Hard Worker with Pete the job guy.

Katie Norton:    Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete:    I’m glad you’re here. Now, what is your certification? I can say CITRMS, or something like that, but what are you certified in?

Katie Norton:    I’m really certified to go into companies and train their employees on how to prevent identity theft in the workplace. So it’s called certified identity theft risk management specialist, it’s a-

Arren:  Wow, say that five times fast.

Katie Norton:    Yeah, you can’t. I’m lucky I got it out the first time.

Pete:      But you know, I know when you ask a lot of 10 and 12 year olds, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? I would say out of like 100, zero would say I want to be a certified identity theft protection risk management consultant, saving the world, right?

Katie Norton:  That’s right. That’s right.

Pete:   So how did you come to this career choice?

Katie Norton:  Well, you know, I was involved with … I was already in the market, I was already in the space, because I was marketing in legal, an identity theft plan. Low and behold, my own son got effected by identity theft.

Pete:   Oh boy.

Katie Norton:   Just to tell the story really quickly, he called me one day, I was at a customer’s place, and he called me and he said, “Mom, I’ve got a little problem.”

Pete:       Oh, usually when they say I’ve got a little problem, they’re in handcuffs, and they’re in the back seat, and it’s not such a little problem. Is that what it was?

Katie Norton:   It was very similar. He said, the first thing, he calls, and he says, “I’ve got a little problem.” He said, “I can’t go to work today, because my driver’s license is suspended, and they have suspended me from my work, because I drive for a living.”

Pete:  Oh my gosh.

Katie Norton:  Whenever your kid calls you and actually confesses that their driver’s license is suspended, you’ve got to believe that it’s not really them. So I said, “Zack, it sounds a lot like identity theft, let’s look into this a little bit further. Matter of fact, you need to go report it to the sheriff’s office.” So he does. The next day, goes to the sheriff’s office, calls me, “Mom, I’ve got a little problem.” I said, “What is it, Zack?” He says, “They have warrants for my arrest.”

Pete:   Oh, no.

Katie Norton:   Three different counties. Six tickets in a matter of two months. I said, “Zack, first we need to define the size of a problem. This is not a little problem.” Then I told him he called the wrong number, because I knew … He didn’t find it very funny, but I did.

Pete:    Zack, I don’t know Zack.

Katie Norton:    But we were able to prevent him from being, you know, that’s why I’m passionate about my company. We were able to prevent him from being arrested by …

Pete:   So was his … Did somebody take his wallet, or was somebody masquerading as him? How did all this come about?

Katie Norton:   That’s a great question. Somebody, he had a roommate, a couple of roommates. He was in his early 20s. One of the roommates workers for his landscaping crew looked a lot like my son, not as good looking.

Pete:   Of course not.

Katie Norton:   Of course not. But he took my son’s driver’s license. It seemed like a personal vendetta almost. How many people get six traffic violations in two months?

Arren:    Oh my gosh.

Pete:    Wow.

Katie Norton:      I mean, I drive all over the country on a regular basis. I’ve only gotten two or three recently.

Pete:   You know, you think about that, right? I think roommate situation, everybody has that crazy roommate. It seems like when you’re, okay, guys, we’re going to all, have three or four of us live in this house, we each pitch in, and we only pay two, 300 bucks a month, and we get to live in a good place, everything is great.

Katie Norton:  Shared economy.

Pete:     Right. Then there’s the one knucklehead. Right? There’s the one knuckle, or if his name is Chuck, he’s a chucklehead, if there is a chucklehead in there, what’s he going to do? He’s going to lift this, he’s going to be taking the change out of your top drawer, he’s going to be calling your girlfriend behind your back.

Arren:   Drink all the milk.

Pete:  He’s going to steal your identity, get six tickets, and make sure that your driver’s license is suspended. Okay?

Katie Norton:   Exactly.

Pete:   That’s the chucklehead your son had. So how did you unwind that? Once it’s wound, it’s tough to unwind, right?

Katie Norton:   We wouldn’t have been able to do it by ourself. I mean, it was just really smart that we had an identity theft protection, we had a legal plan. I mean, that’s what I do. They were able to unwind everything. He was back to work in a couple of days, but his driver’s license was repaired in three different counties in a matter of two weeks, he was back to work. So the worst that happened was I subsidized his income for two weeks.

Pete:  Well, that’s great. I want to talk about a couple of things with you, and I’m glad you’re here today, because I think we can talk about some tips that companies can do to prevent employees from being victims, or even the company to be at risk. Also some things that individuals and people can do to protect their identity. Then also, maybe more of an overarching thing, what is some of the safeguards we can put in place so that if it does happen to you, which everybody listen, if it hasn’t, it’s going to, in some degree or another, they’re out there. They’re trying to get us.

Pete:  Is there something that people can do to protect themselves, kind of maybe put one of those force field around themselves, so that if it does happen, it shortens the pain, and some things we can do? But first, let’s kind of paint with a broad brush, and let’s start as an employer in town. What is some of the things I have to tell my employees, or be on guard against, or some discussions that I should have to help protect the company’s assets and protect them from any kind of identity theft and hackers, etc?

Katie Norton:  Yeah, I’ve worked with over 200 companies just in the Jacksonville market, going in and talking to them just about this very thing, doing a workshop with them, getting all their employees signed off, that they’ve been through the training. Really, that’s what they need. They need to have someone come in, and train their employees on how to prevent the simple things of identity theft. You know, over 70% of identity theft happens in the work … Originates in the workplace, not because of an employee’s intent. Really, because of employee error. They do something like walk away from their desk, and leave information out on the desk. Somebody walks by with a camera, you know, we all have one, we carry it with us on our hip, or at our purse, everywhere we go.

Pete:   You know, I have to say, as … Look, I run a staffing agency, right? Everything I do, I deal with the workforce. I’ve employed thousands and thousands of temporary employees, and I’ve heard everything happen. One of the things that happened recently to a temporary employee that was on an assignment, she got up, it’s almost textbook. You and I haven’t even had any pre conversation about this. This temporary employee got up to use the restroom, let her wallet. When she came back, one of the employees that was there was just putting her purse back. She said, what are you doing? He says, oh, I was going to mess with you, and I was going to put this in the kitchen, I was going to hide it.

Pete:   She goes, that’s my personal property, I don’t appreciate you touching it. He goes, I’ll never do it again, I was just … Well, don’t you know? All of a sudden, the next day, all these obscure charges happened because he had taken a picture of her doggone credit card, used it, and a simple thing like just taking your purse with you is something you need to talk about, even in the workplace, a place where people don’t naturally feel vulnerable.

Katie Norton:  I think of … I always tell employers, make sure that your employees are using a two lock policy. If they’re walking away with something sensitive in their office, it should be locked. Even if they’re just walking down the hall to get a bottle of water, going to the restroom, they need to consider a two lock policy. Lock your desk, lock your door, make sure the building is locked at night, because of things like that. That was intent, that was full intent, someone was trying to-

Pete:   Oh yes, that was …

Katie Norton:   It could have been so much worse, though, because they catch the credit so quickly, the banks. They catch the credit through your credit card companies. But what they don’t catch is whenever someone gets your medical ID, and then the next thing you know, you have a situation where you’re receiving a bill … I mean, Pete, have you had a hysterectomy? That bill might be a little bit funny, right?

Pete:   Oh wow. That’s on your report, right? You’re responsible for that until somebody cleans it up, sure.

Katie Norton:  Or they change your blood type. Now you’re getting a procedure done, and your HIPPA records have changed. You don’t know it, and they don’t understand why you killed on the operating table, right?

Pete:    Yep. Do you even hear how my thought process goes right to the credit card, because I’m not an identity theft expert, and I don’t even think about. There is more damage on my personal wallet right now. If someone got that, I mean, I … You know, you guys can’t see what happened, as soon as I said that, I always lay my wallet down when I-

Arren:   I got it.

Pete:   Arren just went and picked up my wallet. That’s how irresponsible I am. She’s snapping pictures of everything, and now I’m going to have a hysterectomy. Thanks a lot.

Arren:   Oh my gosh.

Pete:     What else?

Katie Norton:  You know, your driver’s license is a holy grail of everything. Another thing that companies could do is make sure that they’re top of mind on everything, that they’re making sure that things are locked, that shredding is taking place. Those are the simplest, easiest things that they can do. Of course, I can go into a 30 minute training on that, and we won’t do that here. That’s not fun. But you know, there are some things that we do at home, too, that need to be addressed. Things that we do in our personal life that’s going to help … Some things that people aren’t thinking about right now. Some of it is even going to save you money.

Arren:   Oh, tell us.

Pete: Like what? I want to save money.

Katie Norton:  So we travel, right? We’re often in hotel lobbies, and things, using the computers, or maybe we’re at the office store because we have to print something out, and we’re using their internet, their websites. Really, what we should be doing, even if we’re using those, is using an incognito browser. It’s just a matter of right clicking on the tab at the top of your internet explorer and saying I want to open a new incognito window. Where that saves you money, whenever it comes to airlines, is if you’re going to the same computer from the same IP over and over again, and they see you’re searching for the same flight, to get a better price, to get a better price. You’ll notice it keeps going up, up, up, there is no better price, It’s because some of them-

Arren:   They’re tracking you. That’s exactly what I do when I’m looking for flights, I open an incognito, and then I go to kayak.com.

Pete:    So wait a second now. If I access the same sites over and over, and I’m not doing it in the incognito, someone is tracking me and they’re going to give me different …

Katie Norton:    They are.

Pete:  Shut up.

Katie Norton:  That’s the rumor, that’s the rumor, that you’re getting higher flight rates, just because of that. But even more importantly, if you’re doing it under the incognito window, it goes away, it doesn’t keep any-

Arren:    Saving your information.

Katie Norton:  In that window.

Pete:  Got it.

Katie Norton:   Saving your information. Then the phishing emails. You brought that up earlier, they’re so easy to trick someone. My brother, just the other day, called me and said, “Hey, I just got a message on my computer that if I don’t call this number, that they’re going to take over my computer. It’s Microsoft.” I said-

Pete:    Oh my god.

Arren:  We got that email earlier today. Oh yeah.

Pete:  We did, yeah.

Katie Norton:   [crosstalk 00:19:18]. Oh my goodness.

Pete:   It’s weird, because they look so official, they’ll have the logo of whatever it is, and say, oh, we just need a password update. I was watching one on one of those expo shows on TV, I don’t know which one, like a 48 hours … Not 48 hours. What’s … I don’t know. One of these ones where they were doing this thing on identity theft. The very people, the producers that were on the show going through, meeting the guests, and talking, all this stuff, we said, watch this. We’re going to send them an email, that we’re updating, we’re all getting brand new phones. They’re going to be so excited that they’re going to be getting all brand new phones, all they have to do is send in so they can update the software, just send us your password, send this, and your new phone will be issued today.

Pete: Both the producers of that show immediately got the email, responded to it, and then all of a sudden the camera crew comes in and says, hey, did you fools know that you just did exactly what they said? But it was legit, it was from this, and we’re getting new phones. Well, number one, you’re not getting new phones, and number two, you’re stupid. We just told you not to do this stuff.

Katie Norton:  It is absolutely crazy what happens. Just with the phishing emails, if you just hover over top of the email address that it comes from, you’ll see it’s not really that address. Just never, ever click on a link on an email. I know we’ve heard that over and over again, and it’s a simple tip. But never click on a link in an email. Just go directly, matter of fact, pick up the phone. It’s old fashioned, it’s really direct, there’s no way to hack it. So pick up the phone and call your bank, call your credit card company, or whatever it might be.

Pete:   You know, Katie, I want to just hit that one again, because everybody here, you’re going to get the phishing email. You’re going to get one. It’s going to say click here to just update this, and it’s going to look so professional. As Katie said, you just hover your pointer over it, don’t click on it for gosh’s sake’s, but just hover over it. You’ll see some random Gmail or something that doesn’t correspond with that, don’t ever click it anyway, but you can just see, this is garbage, delete it. Especially if it’s from an unknown source. But even when it looks legit, it’s probably not.

Katie Norton:  Let’s talk about passwords.

Pete:    Let’s here it.

Arren: Oh no.

Katie Norton:   You know, passwords … I see this look on people’s face, where you just lose it.

Pete:    One, two, three, four.

Katie Norton:  That’s right, one, two, three, four.

Arren:   Password.

Katie Norton: You know, they just lose their mind whenever I start talking about it in meetings and training employees, because I’ll say, you know, if I wanted to know, let’s say Pete. You have everybody’s information, right? If I wanted to know your password, and you were a Facebook person. But, we won’t go there. But if I wanted to know the password for you, I would start thinking about, where can I gather the most personal information about this person? Because that’s what people do. They use their kid’s names, or cat’s name, their dog’s name, I know you’re a dog person, not a cat person.

Arren: Birthday.

Katie Norton:  Want to make sure we keep up with this.

Pete:   I’m going to talk about that a little bit later, I have to address the cat person versus dog person. I got beat up on that, and I still …

Katie Norton:   No, no, but he loves cats, he loves cats. But anyways, I’m going to be thinking about that, and I’m going to be looking for your anniversaries, looking for your birthdays. I see people literally trying to think how quickly can they get to their computer or their phone to change their password because I’ve really guessed, if I really did know the name of their kid, their kid’s birthday, that they would have … I would be in their password. So we need to be thinking about using smarter passwords, or even a password generator. ID Shield has ID Vault, and you know, there is other ones, Lass Pass, and so on. But using one, where it generates the password for you, and then fills it in for you later. I could never remember any of the ones they generate, never remember those.

Pete: You know, there is a certain population, I’m talking to you, you know who you are right now, listener, I’m talking to you. I know right now that your ATM password is one, one, one, one. You know it’s you, I just called you out. There is another one, there’s some of you guys out there, it is still one, two, three, four. I know that to be true, and I’m coming to get you. There you go.

Katie Norton: Hey, if you don’t want to use one of the password generators, just switch it up a little bit. Put your capital letters in the middle, put your symbols in the middle, you know, do it a little differently. Don’t … You’re trying to change your passwords right now, aren’t you?

Arren:   No, my trick is, actually, instead of using … So I’ll spell out something, oh, no, somebody is going to hack me.

Pete:   Go ahead, I’m writing this down now, Arren.

Arren:  I will spell out a word, or a couple of letters that mean something significant to me-

Pete: Significant, there we go, bingo.

Arren:   And then I’ll use numbers instead of the letters. So instead of using the letter A, I’ll use a four or something, I don’t know, just so that I can remember it.

Katie Norton:  Oh, or a dollar sign instead of an S.

Arren:  Yeah. Something like that, so that you can use those characters, and it may not be a parent or the hacker that’s trying to hack you. But don’t be listening hacker.

Pete:   Real nice, Arren. We’re at that point right now, we’ve got to take a break. I want to have Katie, hang around here, because I want to have you come back. But right now, let’s take a pause, we’re WOKV 104.5, let’s get a news and weather update.

Pete:   Welcome back all you hard workers. We’ve got our update, and here we are. We have Katie Norton right here. Katie is giving us great information about identity theft protection, and how to protect and keep ourselves safe from all those hackers and people that are trying to get at our stuff. Katie, you know, what about … What can we do with social media? What about social media?

Katie Norton:  You know, right now, of course, Facebook, I know we’ve talked about how Instagram is really the direction people are going. So, you basically want to get in there, look at your privacy settings. They made it easier to get to the privacy settings, because they’ve caught so much flak over not being able to find them and being able to protect yourself. So get in there and set it up to indicate who you really want to be able to see your pictures, tag you in pictures. You talked a little bit about, on one of the shows, about how do you want your boss to be in your social media?

Pete:   Right.

Katie Norton:  Well, you know, hey, you can block them before they ever friend you.

Arren:  That’s cool.

Katie Norton:    Not that that’s a good idea, but …

Pete: You know what I see? I’ve been guilty of this myself. Let’s say you go on vacation somewhere. I’m like, hey, check us out, here we are in Bali, Indonesia. Check us out. While I’m gone, I’m sending stuff, a clear indicator that everything is vacant. What do you have to say about that?

Katie Norton:  There are identity theft protection plans, you know, not … Yes, definitely to toot my own horn about the one that we have. But there are identity theft protections that monitor your social media. If they don’t, it’s not a comprehensive identity theft protection. That social media needs to be monitored for things like to protect your character. So have you ever gotten that, all of your friends, all of a sudden, are mad at you? They’re sending you messages like, I can’t believe you posted that on Facebook?

Pete:  Oh yes.

Katie Norton:  It’s some kind of obscene, vulgar thing that a hacker, because you clicked the phishing link, and they changed your password, and now they’ve posted something that’s obscene on your Facebook page, damaging your character. Well, I actually was on Twitter, and I had put a comment on there, and it had the word sex, but it wasn’t a sexual comment, it wasn’t anything obscene. But my social media monitor caught it and said, you may want to go out there and remove this post, because it could damage your character. So that’s what you want.

Arren: Oh, that’s cool.

Katie Norton: You want something that’s going to catch the things that you’re not seeing.

Pete:  There are a lot of different products out there to help you. To you, in your estimation, you’ve been doing this for a while, what’s the most comprehensive one? What do you personally use?

Katie Norton: I’m a little biased, because I do offer a plan. Well, there are some good ones out there, there are. But whenever you’re talking about comprehensive, you want something that’s going to do a complete and comprehensive restoration of your identity, back to pre theft status. You’re not looking for somebody who is going to, a company that’s going to say, we’re going to send a package in the mail, and whenever you get it, let us know, we’ll tell you what to do. No, you want somebody who is going to send a licensed private investigator, have you sign a limited power of attorney. They go to work for you as experts to restore your identity, that way you don’t have to lose time-

Pete:   Yeah, you’re already dealing with-

Katie Norton:  You lose sleep.

Pete:  Yeah, you’re dealing with a lot when your identity has been stolen. To some, you’re talking about maybe there’s a mortgage in your name, a lot of different things can happen. It’s very difficult, it can be a long process to restore it. The last thing you want to do is do that yourself or wing it, right?

Katie Norton:  Right. In 2012, the Today Show, they had three stories on there about children. One of them was a girl who was nine years old who had had her identity stolen, 11 years prior to her birth, because they got her social security number. It wasn’t hers at that time, but it was already generated. They were predictable. They’ve changed that a little bit since that timeframe, where it’s not quite as predictable. But there are still a lot of them out there that were, and they’re being used. So she had … Another girl had $750,000 in debt at age 14, and then a three year old filing bankruptcy because of all of the debt, and the houses, and the cars that had been purchased.

Pete:  I hope everybody hears this. This can be life changing. When it happens to some people, and some people, I know there are listeners, write into me, and tell me your story at Pete@petethejobguy.com. If your identity has been stolen, share it with me. I’d love to hear from some of you that have actually dealt with this. There are terrible stories, but when we hear bad things, we learn from them. We learn how to protect ourselves. Talk to us a little bit about the ones that you say, that you use. You’re biased.

Katie Norton:I’m biased. I’m biased. The plan that I use, of course my son uses, my whole family, is Identity Shield. It’s ID Shield, and it’s brought to you by Legal Shield. ID Shield is comprehensive. We had the highest guarantee in the industry of restoring your identity. So a five million dollar service guarantee that we’ll spend our money, on our private investigators, to restore your identity back to pre theft status. Then we monitor everything. I mean, you have an app right in your hand, it tells you your credit score, so you can see if there is any changes there. But it also tells you if there is any kind of those alerts, like those social media alerts. You can use your ID Shield Vault password right from your phone, right on your browser of your computer. So it’s real simple to use. But they’re doing all the work. They’re doing all the hard stuff. You just get to sleep with peace of mind.

Pete:   I was going to say, when your head hits the pillow at night, you’ve got to have some peace of mind knowing that, hey, they’re out there trying to get me. I know they’re trying to get me, everybody wants the keys to the castle, they’re coming after me. I don’t care who you are or what your station is in life, they’re coming after you, someone is trying to get your identity, or get access to information you have. But this is like one of those comforting blankets that kind of protects you, and your head hits the pillow, and you feel like, wow, I’m protected here.

Katie Norton:If you think about it, there are people out there that still say, I don’t get on the computer, I’m not susceptible to this, I can take care of it myself if it happens. It’s not true. It takes 600 man hours to restore someone’s identity on an average basis. They think because they’ve never been on a computer, they don’t do social media, that they’re not vulnerable. But if you’ve ever been anywhere, and you’ve given them your driver’s license, your social, your medical ID, and you’ve had them copy it on a copier, now you’re open, you’re exposed, because I mean, have you heard of this before? Where they go in, and they buy the copiers after they’ve been turned back over to the leasing companies-

Pete:     Oh, wow.

Arren:   No, I’ve never heard of that. But that is crazy.

Pete:  There are cracks in the armor everywhere. It’s amazing.

Katie Norton:  They’ve striked 48,000 documents and they sell most of it.

Pete:   Katie, now if folks want to get ahold of you or learn more, what’s your contact information?

Katie Norton:They can reach me by email, of course, Katie@katienorton.net. They can reach me by phone, 904-903-1179, or they can go to my website, which is Katienorton.net.

Pete:  Okay.

Arren:  That’s easy.

Katie Norton:  Easy. Really simple.

Pete: Katie, you’ve been an outstanding guest. You’ve given us some great tips that are going to help people, and I hope people wrote some of these things down. I want you to reach directly out to Katie if you have any questions, concerns, run it by her. She’s a wealth of knowledge. Here is one thing I want to kind of … We’re going to wrap up a bit here, Katie. Again, you didn’t … When you were 12 years old, you didn’t say you want to be an identity theft expert, right? But as your career has changed, and morphed, and we talk a lot about people going their career isn’t straight up to the top, sometimes you’ve got to climb back down, and over before you can go up. What would you tell maybe your 20 year old self that would help prepare you for what you’re doing now, or the benefit of hindsight, what do you go back and this future Katie goes and says, past Katie, hey, do this. If you just did this, things would be better for you, what would you tell yourself?

Katie Norton: You know, I’d tell myself a couple of things, personally and professionally.

Pete:   Stay away from that guy.

Katie Norton:   But the main thing I’d probably tell myself is to be open to being an entrepreneur, because the nine to five cubicle space was not for me. I don’t sit still well-

Arren:   Preach.

Katie Norton:   It just wasn’t for me. College was never an option that I was aware … It just wasn’t something that I took advantage of. My family wasn’t in that position to put me through college, and I didn’t really look at any other avenues. So being an entrepreneur, once I discovered it, even as a part-time basis, because that’s how I started. I was with Mary Kay Cosmetics for 10 years. I drove a pink Cadillac.

Pete:  Oh, you earned the big stuff. All right. You weren’t just an average seller there.

Katie Norton:  No. I did a great job with it. But I started part-time on the side as a plan B with some extra income. Then whenever I discovered the power of residual income, and was looking for that, that’s when I discovered Legal Shield, and I went over to this business. It’s been great, because I’ve been able to work in that space of a corporate environment without having to be there every day. It’s super nice walking down the hallway in my pajamas to go to my office you know?

Pete:   The commute is heck, right?

Katie Norton:  The commute is fantastic. But have a plan B, don’t be afraid to have something in addition to what you’re already doing, and find something that you really love.

Arren:  I love that.

Katie Norton: I’d say the last thing would be to always be ready, because in some moments, whenever I didn’t, maybe I was in between jobs, I still got up every morning, and I got dressed like I was going to go to work in case I got a call from a resume, or I got a call from a staffing agency, or I got a call to do some temp work, whatever it might have been. I had some of my best sales whenever someone said, hey, can you come right now? Just always be ready.

Pete: That’s fantastic. You know, Katie, that’s because you’re a hard worker. That’s something, Katie is someone you want to have in your corner should anything like this happen, or if you want a preventative, take preventative measures, call Katie Norton. We’re so glad that you shared your Sunday morning with us on Hard Worker.

Katie Norton:  Aw, thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete: And now my dear friends, we come to one of my favorite parts of the show each week. This is where we get leadership lessons with Coach Larry. This is where I want to invite everybody to make sure you take careful notes, and do something differently. If you lead people, or if you’re a manager, you do something differently as a result of the tips that Coach Larry gives us, and you will be more effective and more productive in your role. Now, take it away Coach Larry.

Larry:   Thank you Pete. So today I’m going to talk about how to handle emotions at work, from the leadership perspective. It’s perfectly natural to have emotions at work, as a matter of fact, it’s impossible to have a thought without an emotion. We have over 60,000 thoughts in a day. So there is over 60,000 emotions that we feel in a given day. Sometimes the emotions can get quite high. So today’s lesson is about how do you handle a situation when someone is emotional, when someone is upset about something, so that you can get to problem solving?

Larry: The reality is if someone is emotional, they’re not able to be logical at the same time. The brain just doesn’t work that way. There is the emotion part of the brain called the amygdala, and there is the logical part of the brain, called the neocortex. I like to think about it as balance. You need to be balanced in order to make logical decisions. I know there have been times where I have made decisions when I am emotional about something, and I regretted it. So what do you do when someone comes to your office or comes to you, and they’re upset about something?

Larry:    So what I used to do was I used to act very calm and cool. I thought, well, if they come to me, and they’re upset, I’m going to be cool. My coolness will flow towards them, and then they, in turn, will be cool, and calm down. Well, actually, the opposite happened. By doing so, I frustrated people, because they thought, you don’t get it. You don’t understand me. This is a serious situation, and you’re calm as can be. So what do you do in those situations? So the tip I’m going to talk about today, or the leadership lesson is about using empathy. I use the acronym of NAP, which is N, name the emotion, A, attribute the emotion to something, and then P, pause. Before I do that, let me pause and tell you a quick story about the amygdala hijack.

Larry:  One day I was walking in the woods with my wife and my two boys, in the white mountains in New Hampshire. They’re known for having brown bear. My wife said to us, “Listen, there may be bear.” It’s dusk, and we did our research beforehand, what do you do when you see a bear? Well, for the brown bear, you’re supposed to just stop, keep looking at them, walk backwards until you and they feel safe, and then walk more briskly away.

Larry: So we’re on our hike, I was in the front, my two boys were in the middle, and my wife was in the back, enjoying our beautiful hike through the white mountains. All of a sudden, I hear snap. Then ahead of us, I see a bear. It just turns and looks at us. This bear was huge. Every time I tell the story, the bear gets even bigger. So what did I do at that moment? Turn around, scream, bear, run, push my wife and kids out of the way, and I made it safely into the parking lot, and they did as well. It was, yes, in that order, I’m ashamed to say. But what happened to me was something called the amygdala hijack.

Larry:  Remember I said earlier, you can’t be emotional and logical at the same time. Your emotion tends to take over. I had a plan, I knew what we were supposed to do. We agreed to it. But when I saw the bear, my emotions took over, and my logic went out the window. So think about it this way. Let’s talk about the situation. If someone comes to you, and they are emotional, instead of trying to immediately go to logic, it’s about naming the emotion, attributing the emotion, and then pausing. It might sound something like this.

Larry:  Larry, I know that you’re frustrated, I hear that you’re upset. I hear that you’re angry, because you didn’t get the report on time. As a result, your work is going to be late, and you’re afraid that you’re going to look bad, and then pause, and see what happens. Chances are, they’re going to feel that you get it. You shared that empathy, and then they’re going to calm down. Once you notice that, that they’ve calmed down, then it’s a time to move to solutioning and say, okay, what can we do about this? What thoughts do you have? Would you like to hear some thoughts from me?

Larry:  So again, just to recap, the leadership lesson for today is if you do see a bear … No, just kidding. The leadership lesson for today is if someone comes to you and their amygdala is hijacked, they’ve been triggered by something. Name that emotion, attribute it to a reason, and then pause. When you get the sense that they’re ready to move into problem solving, that’s the time to move into problem solving and no sooner.

Larry:     So everyone on the radio, listen, connect with me on LinkedIn, it’s Larry O’Brien, and when you do that, I’m happy to submit to me what your ideas are for this radio program or leadership lessons, or tell me about situations that you’ve experienced and ask me any questions about how to handle it from the leadership perspective. Also, go to Mendoza and O’Brien, my website, and there you can see some of the programs that I’m doing. Thanks so much, everyone. Pete, back to you.

Pete:  Thank you very much Coach Larry. Great tips, as always. Now it’s time to go to the world famous Arren Mills with the job update.

Arren: Thanks Pete. I’m Arren Mills, and this is your J-O-B report. The August unemployment rate remained at 3.9% for the second straight month. The job list rate has yet fallen to May’s rate of 3.8% in the current expansion. It previously hit that level in 2000. Part of the reason the unemployment rate hadn’t continued to descent in the recent months, more Americans were joining the labor force. In August, though, the number of Americans in the labor force dropped. Hiring regained momentum in August as employers added 201 thousand workers to payroll. Back to Jack’s unemployment rates for the Jacksonville area is a tad lower than the national average at 3.8%. At this time last year, the Jack’s area unemployment area was at 4.1%. I’m Arren Mills, and that was your J-O-B report. Now back to you, Pete.

Pete: Outstanding, Arren. When you’re talking about 3.8% unemployment in Jacksonville, especially in the professional space market, I’m going to tell you something, that’s essentially zero. Okay? It really is. It’s like everybody is working, which means the supply and demand does not work out so well for employers that are looking to attract and entice employees. What I always tell employees, and you, Arren, you were with me this Thursday, I think it was a Thursday, we went to the Jacksonville Beach Chamber event.

Arren:  That’s right.

Pete: The guest speaker was Marian Phelan, who is the CEO of Hash Rocket, out at the beach. She did such a wonderful job of articulating her key differentiators as an employer to the whole group, she stood up in front of the group, and she said, “Why would people work at Hash Rocket?” She did a great job of saying, you know, number one, they’re working with ruby on rails, and cutting edge technology. But the environment she creates is one where they’re always learning. Everyone there is always learning. She talked about the fact that listen, it doesn’t hurt that we’re located right here in Jacksonville Beach, on the 7th floor of a building overlooking the ocean, and you can walk out any time and go and enjoy yourselves.

Pete:  But she created a culture. When she said that, and I think about the unemployment rate, like you said, at 3.8%, employers have to be just like Marian, and understand how … What is so great about working at your company, or what is unique about your organization? Do you give back to the community? Do you have a wellness program? Are you located in a special spot? She did such a great job of that at that event. I just … Hats off to Marian. You remember that? What else? You went to that chamber event. What did you like about that?

Arren:  Oh, it was so fun meeting all of the business leaders in the community, and getting to speak with them, because they are people that run these businesses here. But I did like what Marian was talking about, that key, her value proposition, not only explains why people are attracted to the business, but also retains them. So it’s those two big things for unemployment.

Pete: That was probably … Okay, we’ve got to do a couple of things right here. From the mail bag, okay, first I’m going to tell everybody that has a cat, okay … I’m not going to apologize for my comment. I do think a dog is a superior animal. I do think that.

Arren:     So many emails.

Pete:  I will hold true to my values, and I’m entitled to my opinion. Okay? But cat lovers, okay, look, you’ve got a nice animal. I’m sure Fluffy is sweet to you, and your cat is special, and he comes to you when you call him, and he’s sweet. Okay, I don’t need any more mail, hate mail about me and the fact that I prefer dogs over cats. Just leave it alone. I made a comment about it, right, cat lover? I salute you, okay? Hurray, pat Fluffy for me. Okay? That’s great.

Pete:   The other thing, from the mail bag, is some people tell me some great things, they write in and say, hey, Pete, you were great, hey, Arren, you’re wonderful, positive energy, all that stuff. But then there are other people that say, well, wait a second. That’s not so special. I did receive multiple emails that took exception about John Powell, very specific statement, John, one of our guests, had some things to say, his opinion about pre employment screening, which is fine. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, and his experience was a negative one.

Pete: But I do want to read this, from two different things from a couple of listeners. One wrote about employment assessments, pre employment screening. “This is an emerging field, and has grown tremendously over the past few decades, and the human brain and the study of it, science, and now it’s the number one study in medical arena. Over 50% of American and western European countries rely on these assessments for hiring, training, and developmental purposes. Human data management and people analytics will play a much more important role in the future than it does today.”

Pete:  Okay, I just want to make sure. We’re not always right, but we have our opinions, and we share to help make things better. Guys, if you’re having trouble finding a good qualified candidate, I want you to reach out to me at Pete@petethejobguy.com, or you can always reach our office at SNI Companies at 904-713-2550. I want to thank our guest today, Katie Norton. She did a fantastic job sharing with us tips to protect our identity and to prevent hackers from getting important information from us. I want to thank Coach Larry, as always his leadership tips are fantastic, and let’s take the emotion out of our decision and all that other stuff. Guys, I want you to go out and have a monster, big week, have a fantastic work week. But guys, stay safe, and go Jaguars.