Hello and welcome everybody to the fourth episode of the Intellicheck podcast. I'm your host Bill Roth. This is the show where we delve into the news and issues around identity verification, identity fraud, and the tools needed to combat it. This week's topic is stealing an identity, and how terrifyingly easy it is to do so. With us this week is Intellicheck CEO Bryan Lewis, a noted expert on the subject as you will find out. Welcome, Bryan.
Thanks for having me. It's a fun time.
So, we had had some conversations in the past and you had talked about just how frighteningly easy it is to steal an identity. Tell us a little bit about that because it's way easier than I thought it was.
Oh, I definitely bum my friends out when I talk about how easy it is to do it. You know, the amount of information about all of us that has been hacked is what makes it so simple to steal your identity. You know, I think last year I was involved in nine data hacks, you know, and I think the biggest one was, you know, United Healthcare. Everything about me was hacked, right down to pictures of my driver's license, which means now you have everything you need to know to say that you're Brian.
Now, the other thing I'll say is if you think about it, when you go in to do anything and somebody asks you to prove who you are, they ask for two things.
Yeah. Government issued ID and social security number. Well, these are all fakes that we have gotten from our customers, right? And our law enforcement agencies who say, "Yep, we confiscated these." Those are cheap. So, let's talk about the cost, right? To go in and buy your identity, all that information, name, address, social security number, email, and phone number, is going to be about $20. To buy one of these fakes that is so good it's hard for law enforcement to look at them and see if they're real is going to be $40. So for basically $60, I become you and I can go shopping. I can open up bank accounts. I can walk into the bank and pretend to be you and withdraw all your money. So it is cheap, simple, and easy.
It's terrifying because you said $20, right?
Oh, yeah. And then the other thing is like it's simple enough to search. You can go online like, "Oh, your PayPal account if it's got $1,000 in it, I can buy the login credentials for $20." Right? Getting your Facebook account login credentials, $45. Getting your credit card with the CVV, about $20. So, being able to take over somebody's persona is pretty simple, cheap, and easy.
And I think that includes social security numbers as well, right? Which is sort of key for an I-9.
And every one of these websites that sells you the fake ID for an additional charge, they'll sell you a social security card with a number on it. And again, since I already know what it is, it's going to match, right? And you know, and if you think about it, I think around 300 million over the past 15 years, driver's licenses have been hacked, right? That means because there's two numbers on a driver's license that sort of make it unique. There is the document discriminator and there's the ID number. But when you go to these sites, the ones even on the bright web, let alone the dark web, you can plug in all those numbers, so everything will match what's in the DMV.
So, even the barcode on the back?
