Latest / Challenges of Faith Radio Program / Say what? Someone got your SSN number? Ep 3456

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Say what? Someone got your SSN number? Ep 3456 · Challenges of Faith Radio Program

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Challenges of Faith radio program. I'm Gary McCance.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining here on episode 3,456. Thank you
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  Speaker 1: for tuning in and keep in mind you can tune
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  Speaker 1: in 24 or 7 days a week here on iHeartRadio, Apple, Spotify,
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  Speaker 1: You'll be able to pick up Challenges of Faith radio program.
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  Speaker 1: A Pennsylvania woman facing up to six years in prison
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  Speaker 1: for a Facebook marketplace scam carried out using her social
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  Speaker 1: security number and date of birth shows how the know-your-customer
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  Speaker 1: KYC rules ultimately fail everybody. Amanda Smith, 47, was arrested
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  Speaker 1: in April at her home on an Arkansas warrant and
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  Speaker 1: spent three nights in jail charged with computer fraud, unlawful
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  Speaker 1: use of communication device, and theft of property. The case
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  Speaker 1: rests on a Cash App account used to take $ 1, 000
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  Speaker 1: from a Facebook Marketplace buyer that was open with her
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  Speaker 1: Social Security number and date of birth. The rest of
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  Speaker 1: the account information did not belong to her. The address
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  Speaker 1: was one in Philadelphia she had never lived at. The
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  Speaker 1: phone number was one she may have had in the
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  Speaker 1: early 2000s. The iPhone was running iOS 16.1.1 from 2022.
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  Speaker 1: While she uses an iPhone on iOS 26.5.2, and the
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  Speaker 1: account had a history of Verizon connections, while Smith has
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  Speaker 1: always had AT & T, the account's username, money sign Smithy5687,
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  Speaker 1: was also not hers. They're trying to turn it into
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  Speaker 1: my problem, that I need to prove that I'm innocent,
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  Speaker 1: Smith said. That's not what I grew up believing was
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  Speaker 1: the way it worked. The identity check that was meant
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  Speaker 1: to stop fraud is what pended on her Know Your
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  Speaker 1: Customer rules require Cash App to collect a host of
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  Speaker 1: personal data, including social security numbers, to, ironically, protect against fraud.
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  Speaker 1: As 404 Media put it, that's the first front on
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  Speaker 1: which these rules fail, by making a number something to steal.
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  Speaker 1: Cash App's terms say that the companies may require legal names,
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  Speaker 1: email address, text-enabled mobile phone number, street address, zip code,
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  Speaker 1: date of birth, social security number, a government-issued form of identification.
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  Speaker 1: The terms say we verify your identity on our behalf
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  Speaker 1: and to facilitate certain of our partners, including our banking partners,
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  Speaker 1: in meeting their obligations. Those obligations are the federal customer
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  Speaker 1: identification rules for banks. which require a taxpayer ID number
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  Speaker 1: from U.S. customers. This is why every service that implements
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  Speaker 1: these rules, known as Know Your Customer, KYC, asks for
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  Speaker 1: a social security number, but every new place that collects
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  Speaker 1: these numbers is a new place for them to leak from.
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  Speaker 1: Smith believes her social security number was compromised in a
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  Speaker 1: data breach such as that of the National Public Data,
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  Speaker 1: a background check firm that in 2024 exposed not only
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  Speaker 1: social security numbers, but also names, date of birth, phone numbers,
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  Speaker 1: and addresses. The second front on which KYC fails is
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  Speaker 1: that the check only matches data and does not identify
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  Speaker 1: the person. The federal rule asks for procedures that a
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  Speaker 1: bank form a reasonable belief that if it knows the
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  Speaker 1: true identity of each customer, It allows checks done by
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  Speaker 1: comparison of information provided by the customer with information obtained
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  Speaker 1: from a consumer reporting agency, public database, or other source.
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  Speaker 1: The same check that was done when the account was
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  Speaker 1: opened became the evidence that implicated Smith. The police served
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  Speaker 1: a warrant on Brock, which owns Cash App. and the
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  Speaker 1: account data came back with her social security number and
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  Speaker 1: date of birth. The case record says the information received
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  Speaker 1: from Cash App showed the account receiving $ 1, 000 belonged to Dee.
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  Speaker 1: The detective then confirmed it with her driver's license and
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  Speaker 1: by also running her information through Accra Rent, a tool
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  Speaker 1: made by LexisNexis that, according to the company, helps police
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  Speaker 1: swiftly identify individuals, their assets, addresses, phones, relatives, and associates
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  Speaker 1: by searching billions of records and thousands of independent data sources.
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  Speaker 1: This is the same kind of check matching the data
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  Speaker 1: against public databases and consumer reporting agencies, and it is
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  Speaker 1: what confirmed that the social security number and date of
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  Speaker 1: birth belonged to Smith. And when Smith asked Cash App
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  Speaker 1: to see the account, The company told her she could
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  Speaker 1: not have the information because she was not able to
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  Speaker 1: prove she was the account owner. Say what? Meanwhile, the
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  Speaker 1: only way to get the data was through discovering her
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  Speaker 1: criminal case. Smith's private investigator, Max Ponte, said that the
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  Speaker 1: central issue is the distinction between identifying the person by
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  Speaker 1: name and establishing that the person actually operated or controlled
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  Speaker 1: an account. 404 Media checked the account details using commercial
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  Speaker 1: software Breach data, including tools like District 4 Labs, which
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  Speaker 1: sells one of the world's largest repositories of compromised records
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  Speaker 1: to police and investigators and OSINT industries, which searches accountants
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  Speaker 1: on apps like Strava, Cash Apps, and Airbnb. This case
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  Speaker 1: shows that the current system of collecting and using people's
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  Speaker 1: most sensitive personal data as a means to verify their
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  Speaker 1: identity is broken. It does not achieve its goal of
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  Speaker 1: preventing fraud and instead turns people's lives upside down while
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  Speaker 1: still putting the burden of proof on the victim. The
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  Speaker 1: numbers are collected by banks and other financial institutions and
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  Speaker 1: then shared with third parties and eventually leak through data breaches.