LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 111 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

LPRC Supply Chain Summit is Coming Up in Philly! 5G is Growing Globally and Fast! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss a look at common consumer trends at gas stations, what to do if a nuclear bomb hits, the use of smartphones by consumers in retail spaces, callback phishing scams are on the rise, and a new variant raising COVID numbers. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 111 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners as well as other professionals. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. This is the latest in our weekly update series, and I'm joined today by our co-hosts, Tony Onofrio and Tom Meehan, as well as our producer, Diego Rodriguez. And we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on around the world. I'm going to start a little bit here with the coronavirus, the COVID-19 disease. And, you know, we obviously are hearing that in many, if not most countries around the

world, including the United States, infection rates have shot upward, and again, in a time of much lower testing. So, I saw the latest estimate that the United States is pacing at about 134,000 newly reported weekly infections right now. This compares to this time last year in 2021 to around 23,000 weekly. So, we can see that we've got a very large increase in infections. And really, unlike in the past, I, for some reason, am hearing about a lot of people I know that have gotten, recently gotten COVID. And recently gotten COVID. And most anecdotally seem to be very mild infections. But I see looking at the literature and other postings by virologists and epidemiologists, infectious disease physicians talking about, take it seriously, try and prevent it. But if you're infected, certainly try everything you can not to pass on to someone else, but treat yourself well. Try and hydrate and rest. Get adequate rest. I see that when people power through that many physicians are looking at studies saying that that can prolong the effects.

Again, we're still trying to understand the effects of any virus, I understand, but particularly this particular version of coronavirus. And the idea that this will be with us for a long time seems to be out there. I was listening to a podcast featuring a vaccine specialist. He's a pediatric academic researcher and physician, but internationally known for his vaccine development and research. But he talked about it. There are at least five circulating coronaviruses, but they're able to trace back through time, some of these through genetic modifications, I guess, that occur in the population. And so at least five or so right now in the United States. And and so at least five or so right now in the United States, the earliest they can sort of date back right now, somewhere around the 1700s. So that gives you an idea that we've got a circulating coronavirus. This is not the COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 virus that we're all dealing with here globally, but another version of a coronavirus, evidently.

But that gives you an idea of the persistence of viruses. So, you know, we all still need to continue to take it seriously as far as self-protection. You know, on the vaccine front, the same vaccine research scientist and physician was talking about one of the top vaccine specialists in the world who developed, I think the number was around six of the top 10 childhood disease vaccines, the current versions, which are lifesavers. Vaccines have been total, complete game changers for humanity. But that he never felt comfortable until there were a couple of million people had received the vaccine. In addition, all the rigorous research through preclinical and clinical phase one, two, and three trials, that that's when they started

realizing, okay, this is not only efficacious, it looks like in the follow-on data, but very safe. And at this point now, we're closing in on a billion humans that have been vaccinated with these new vaccines for the coronavirus, for SARS-CoV-2 virus. So bear in mind, this is, you know, this is the most heavily researched, studied, analyzed, whatever, however you want to look at it. The series, particularly these mRNA vaccines that we've got from Moderna and from Pfizer. So we've updated before on here, of course, many, many times that the amount of preclinical, but the clinical trials for other vaccine candidates, 122 clinical trials currently underway. And as we've talked about before, again, it's

efficacious in safety, but does it work well to reduce or prevent even infection like some other vaccines that we've got? And so that's been the holy grail, what they've been chasing. They certainly, the ones that we've got in the United States anyway, are very, very good at reducing the likelihood of very serious disease from an infection, but not necessarily the infection itself. So many of these candidates in there, there are 54 in phase one candidates, there are 46 vaccine candidates in two, and then there are 50 now, an incredible number of COVID vaccines in trial, trial, 50 of those. So, um, standby on all that. Um, now switching over to, uh, the LPRC and, uh, we have a lot of gatherings throughout the year. Typically six is our, is our goal. Um, due to heavy research projects and all, what we've done is we sort of realigned in 2022.

Um, and we're adding two new research. In fact, we've been very blessed with having so many qualified research scientists candidates this time that we've been looking because we're adding two new research. In fact, we've been very blessed with having so many qualified research scientists candidates this time that we've been looking because we're expanding again by two. And so we've got one candidate we interviewed last week in town. We've got another one in Gainesville coming up this week and then another next week, for example. But what we've tried to do is we increase our research bandwidth, is try and refine what we're doing. So August 2nd and 3rd in Philadelphia, we are going to have the Supply Chain Protection Summit put on by the LPRC Supply Chain Protection Working Group. So please go to lpresearch.org or send an email to operations at lpresearch.org for more information on the supply chain summit. That should be a really good one. Our team has been doing a hugely deep dive on looking at all the dynamics the supply chain goes through, all the aiming points

like we do with the journey to crime in a store, office, or parking lot environment. Now we're looking at the supply chain. So LPRC Supply Chain Summit, August 2nd through the 3rd in Philadelphia. Get your information here. Get your information at the LPRC Connect weekly e-newsletter or online on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook postings from the LPRC. We've got our Impact Summit, of course, is going to be the 3rd to the 5th of October. We've got fantastic enrollment, but we encourage everybody to enroll now that's coming in, all of our members, because it's filling up fast. And we really do have a hard stop at 450 participants. So I would please register now those solution

partners that are interested in supporting. We've got a ton that already are and more that are getting ready to support specific sessions or parts of the LPRC 2022 impact. Again, reach out to, if you would, to Diego at lpresearch.org. He'll get the information to the right people to Chad at lpresearch.org or Brian, B-R-Y-A-N. And they'll take care of you on enrolling for impact, enrolling for the Supply Chain Summit, sponsoring the summit and our impact. Now, with the Violent Crime Working Group and with the LPRC's Innovation Working Group, what we've been calling the Socket and Censor Summit, what we're going to do in 2022 here is we are creating special tracks in the impact that will be violent crime-related,

armed robbery and crime mapping, active assailant early threat and better response. You're going to see on homeless and harm and the voice of the stored victims that are exposed to or even seriously affected by violent crime aggression or constant theft in their locations. So that'll be part of our violent crime working group track during LPRC Impact. With the SOC and CENSOR, the LPRC Innovation Working Group, there will be special tracks there. We've got Innovate partners. They will be talking about their technologies. Innovate is a program that was designed four years ago, just about, almost going on four years, to bring together the best and the brightest, to form an advisory panel of specialists. Retailers, right now we're

at 15, but we've got 15 more committed. So you're going to see the innovation people from 30 major retail organizations of all types. We've tried to have quick serve restaurants to convenience stores, to drug stores, mainline department stores, and everything else are all going to be represented on there. Each of those retailers appointing two people to, they can tag team members, if you will. They can both be on a call or at our two meetings at Ignite and Impact, or they can, that way we've always got a consensus of one can't make it, typically another can. So we're going to have a robust annual year-round working group there. And these people are on this advisory panel to really help us think about and plan, integrate, test, roll out, cutting edge, repurposing, enhancementsments and new technologies, particularly integrations

of all the above, for more cost-effective and impactful solution sets with fewer negative side effects. They also are in the tent. They're part of working with innovators, learning future thinking techniques, future design techniques, human-centered design, and so on. So there's a lot of good things in there for our retailer members of the LPRC Innovate Advisory Panel. The other advisory panel members that are mission critical are those that are funding the Innovate program. They're allowing us to bring on two incremental research scientists and a data scientist, along with a net tech or network technician, the technician to help us

constantly integrate and do the groundwork that we need to do in connecting these things and getting them on, hooking up VPNs and making sure we've got all the compute inferencing power that we need capability here. So those members are on there. We've got five currently. We'd like to grow that by 10. So really, at this point, those are the members of the advisory panel. They work together on helping us put together, build the program to conduct innovation. And many things have come out of this group. We've got an integration working group that works for them and with them,

and that includes FusionNet, which is what we stand up. Of course, anytime we've got an emergent situation around elections, match, steam, distribution, riots, burning, looting, active shooter events, anything that looks like it could be a crisis, dangerous weather. So they can get on before, during, and after those events, anything that looks like it could be a crisis, dangerous weather. So they can get on before, during, and after those events, talk with each other,

post open source and other types of intelligence, banners, things you're finding out there in the deep web and online. Also, there are voice channels that they can securely talk to each other to prepare for or during handling or recovering from events. That's been a big one that's come out of there. Some of this innovation research, too, that we've done around active shooter development. We just held a focus group I've mentioned before. Eleven major retailers, their threat assessment people helping us get better at detecting, recognizing, and connecting the dots on distal and proximate threat warnings, leakage, if you will, other signs, indicators, behavioral indicators, whether they're voiced

or they're digital or they are somehow visual. So that's another one. The lab itself, we're now conducting some heavy duty virtual reality research and development. That's all been enabled by the Innovate program. So we'd encourage any SP that's in the LPRC to become an LPRC Innovate partner, get on there, collaborate and work with 30 major retailers, work with our research scientist team around the world, brand and things like that. We've also so that's my main updates right now. We're working, of course, a lot on shoplifting reduction to the product protection working group. Corey, of course, had a very, very successful product protection summit. Of course, had a very, very successful product protection summit. We had voting panels of retailers assessing the aesthetics, the capability, the survivability, but most of the impact and cost effectiveness of proposed solutions throughout five zones to detect and defer, deter, and disrupt, and finally document dishonest people that are stealing from these stores, victimizing them. We've got a lot going on with the ARCS program. You'll hear more about that from Corey Lowe. We'll have him on the Crime Science Podcast. Dr. Lowe is our Senior Research Scientist. Also, the NRSS, the National Retail Security Survey, the latest version, Dr. Lowe

and team are putting that together. We're working closely with and partially funded by the National Retail Federation, the NRF, on that study, organized retail crime study. So you're seeing a lot of baseline information. I mentioned the voice of the victims. That's where we're going to be interviewing in depth retail store employees that have been exposed to aggression or violence in some form, trying to understand the psychological and physical effects on them, their co-workers, their shoppers or customers on that specific location, their community, and so on. So we really want to better define and understand the harm that's created by criminal offenders. So that's it from me. Many, many more things going on that we'll talk about later, including body worn camera research and so on.

So with no further ado, maybe let me go ahead and turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony. Thank you very much. We really, really good updates. And I also want to compliment you on the progress that's being made with the innovation group. updates and I also want to compliment you on the progress that's being made with the innovation group. I know I'm part of it and it's good to see both the engagement and also the progress that we're making in terms of innovation. That's a topic that I spend a lot of time each week. So let me start this week actually from a report from a very good friend and lost revenge

and industry leader from 7-Eleven, Byron Smith. It's my pleasure to summarize a new report on the convenience store industry that he shared this week. Called the Convenience Experience Report and published by Blue Dot.io, this research provides a summary of the state of this very important retail sector. The top five takeaways from the report are six in ten consumers consider purchasing a meal from a convenience store when stopping for fast food. So they're becoming a fast food stop,

which is interesting. There's a significant demand for mobile ordering, drive-thru and curbside pickup. 62% would visit a C-store more often if the the drive-through or curbside pickup was available. To win and retain customer loyalty, gas discounts are imperative. However, right now there's a huge gap between consumers who want loyalty programs for gas discounts and loyalty members who actually get them. Price overwhelmingly impacts where consumers fill up. Nearly nine in ten state that price dictates where they buy gas. And then finally, C-stores and gas stations appear to be losing customers to short lines. One in three will drive away if there's a single car ahead of them at the pump.

Nearly half will walk out of a C-store if one or two people are in line at the register. So it's interesting how aggressive they also are in terms of looking for short lines. Also interesting in the research, seven in ten consumers enter a convenience store when they get gas. Eighty-three percent of consumers are concerned with credit card fraud. The majority of consumers would like to skip swiping or inserting their credit card when paying and the sponsors are looking for something else. Digital screens at the pump irritate consumers. 47% find the elements irrelevant.

41% who's nothing that's interesting and 30 find them too loud uh a bunch of the folks that pump gas uh look at their consumer in fact the half of the consumers look at their phones while pumping i guess the number one reason consumers would download a gas and convenient app on their phone is discounts um uh so 86 percent of customers would download an app for discount, 57% to earn and track loyalty points, and initially 40% would do it to protect from credit card fraud. So that might be an answer, pay with your phone. The top three things that consumers want from their digital screens at the pump,

if you are going to use them, are convenience store deals, loyalty points, levels, and news and entertainment. So interesting in terms of what's going on in the convenience store industry. And again, they're a member of the LPRC, and that's a sector we also look at because that has a lot of interesting activity. Let me switch to a totally different topic and talk from the new data from Statista and summarize how happy and loyal we are to our smartphones in the U.S. And the reason I track smartphones very closely is that in multiple articles, I named the smartphone the third megatrend that disrupted and transformed retail. The reason for that is the smartphone really moved the power of retail from the retailer to the consumer,

who now walking into a store can instantly switch to another retailer, even while standing in front of the product that they're actually trying to buy, if they can find it cheaper somewhere else on their smartphone. With that in mind, which smartphones are we happiest with and most loyal to? The data, again, is from Statista. The number one is Apple. 92% of consumers are satisfied with Apple. And interestingly, the loyalty score is only 13%. Number two is Samsung with 91% satisfied and a 10% loyalty score. And number three is Google with an 85% consumer satisfied and a negative 36% loyalty score. I was surprised, actually, by this research. That's why I'm citing it.

I thought Apple would be a lot farther ahead than Samsung, and they're not. They're extremely close. So I would expect a war of what's new in smartphones to continue. Smartphones are a lot related to what's happening to 5G, and the growth of 5G is important because it allows for more video and more analysis and more aggressive information that we can look at. So speaking of smartphones, where are we in terms of the adoption of 5G? Again, new research from Statista, in 2022 global 5G adoption will cross over a billion subscriptions. A substantial majority of the penetration of the volume of 5G subscription is in Asia

Pacific, followed by North America and Europe. I would expect that India, China, with their large population, are the major contributors to the growth in Asia. By 2027, 4 billion subscription will be in place, with again Asia Pacific leading the way. place with again asia pacific leading the way i continue to follow innovation in china and i can see a lot of the things that they're doing with smartphones including increased applications with video augmented reality virtual reality and they're also deep in trying to figure out how to leverage uh the metaverse and again a good place to understand how all this interplays and how 5G and how we use our smartphones is here at the LPRC and how we experiment. And finally, and Reid mentioned this in terms of the violence groups and all the areas that we spend time. Interesting, just this past week, a couple of folks mentioned the same thing. In a podcast, Terry Sullivan for the Loss Prevention Foundation said, and the podcast was with the Loss Prevention magazine, he cited safety as his most important concern for the retail industry and fully agree with him, especially when you look at some new data that was just published by D&D this week, which highlights

again where we're at with this problem. Starting Memorial Day, the D&D Daily began compiling and analyzing data from 15 major cities to get a snapshot of summer gun violence. In the past seven weekends since Memorial Day, in those 15 major cities, they experienced an amazing 860 shootings with 276 people killed and 896 people injured. Just as past weekend of July 8 to July 10, there were 96 shootings recorded in the same cities, resulting in 26 deaths and 91 injuries. To me, that's very, very disturbing. And again, I urge all listeners to engage with the LPRC to all work together to get a better handle on violence, especially in the retail sector. And with that, let me turn it over to Tom.

Well, thank you, Tony. Thank you, Reid. Good morning. And a couple of different stories today that I find will be interesting. Some of them are in the moment. So we tape on a Tuesday and you will hear some of this happening right now. So the city of New York has issued a public service announcement on what to happen, what to do if a nuclear attack happens. So lots of news around this. I think one of the

representatives from New York City said there's no good time to release a public service announcement like this. There's always going to be concerns. They note that there's no credible or any threat, but they said that this was a public service and there's an amount that needed to go out. And it really talks about the basics of what if there was nuclear fallout, get inside. If you've been exposed to dust or any, were in the cloud to shower immediately, stay inside, and then basically in your house have enough food and water for two days and stay tuned. With the heightened kind of global climate, the incident in the Ukraine, the potential for China and conflict with Taiwan, I would assume, and this is an assumption, that there is some ties of that the timing of this is related to that. But this was something that I think occurred in the past

more often, and we kind of forget. And for anybody who grew up in the 60s and 70s, this was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were a lot of drills and PSAs around that. So I think New York City did a good job of explaining that this was just something that needed to be said. It reminds me of when I was growing up, there was a nuclear power plant within 30 miles of me for a long time, and there were constant drills at school of what would happen during fallout. So I think that while it is certainly unsettling to some degree, it's a necessity to talk about it. I think we'll see more of that in the upcoming weeks just based on some of the things that are occurring globally. Civil unrest. So we've seen an unprecedented amount of civil unrest throughout

the United States and Canada over the last 24 months or so related, whether it be to political decisions or unfortunate instances with law enforcement. But I think something very interesting is going on globally. We know that during the pandemic and the height, there were countries that you would say were not traditionally countries that you would see unrest. And we're starting to see that kind of pop up again. So Sri Lanka ousted its government or their president or tried to oust it. Hundreds of thousands of citizens stormed the capital. We have unrest in Israel, the UK, Italy, Argentina, China, Cuba, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Albania, all happening at the same time.

And obviously here in the US, as we talk about constantly, some of the civil unrest that has recently sprung up from some of the recent Supreme Court decisions. So one of the things that I'm starting to monitor, and I know that the LPRC with the fusion that will monitor too, is now you're in this heightened state of civil unrest. So there is a tremendous amount of chatter. And when you add the global layer into this, and you have countries that you like Cuba and China, Albania, that you would not traditionally see with unrest, certainly in Cuba being a communist government or China, you don't generally see that level of unrest because of the type of countries and the way

the government runs. But we're starting to see that. We're also, while it's being very heavily shielded from the public, we're seeing some unrest in smaller fashions in parts of Russia. in smaller fashions in parts of Russia. The chatter is, you know, over anything I've ever seen from social media of what is occurring. And most of all of those countries that I mentioned were around government corruption or things that weren't agreed with the government. It is kind of a sign of a potential turning of people trying to get more involved in government. This unrest that I mentioned in some of these countries is, while it is large scale, in some cases it is peaceful, in others it is a little bit more

potentially violent and destructive. So we'll continue to monitor it. I think it warrants conversation about the importance of having a long-term monitoring strategy around civil unrest and planning and watching what's occurring in other countries. We know that humans are humans, and we know that if things are happening in other countries that there sometimes do spill over to here. I think there's certainly a political movement outside of the United States where we're seeing in the UK unrest and then Boris is stepping down. we're seeing the Sri Lankan president in hiding. So we're starting to see this turn of the tides. And I do think that it's important to stay tuned to it because I think there is absolutely a need to pay attention to what I, I don't want to use the word copycat, but it's kind of the best way I can

think about it. When you're looking at some of these organizations and groups that do form protests, they generally do look to see what's occurring in other countries and how it can be instituted here in the US. That is what I'm starting to see. I'm seeing a lot of chatter of an uprising and a power to the people message of that. One message was there were six additional countries, I'm reading this, six additional countries decided to show the government that the people have the power and they don't. When will we in the United States take this approach?

So there is definitely some anti-government rhetoric out there and in a larger scale than in the past. So certainly something we will watch here at the LPRC through the FusionNet. And I think there's a lot of news today and yesterday about a new COVID-19 variant, BA5, the sub-variant taking over. I think what I'm starting to see chatter is, is how do tech companies protect people's privacy while still allowing for contract tracing? We're in this new kind of realm.

I'm actually on the West Coast today, and I saw more people with masks than I've seen in recent months at the airport, travel quite a bit. And so now this whole contract tracing using technology, how can the government do contract tracing while still protecting privacy and identify clusters. So there's a lot of talk about that in the tech space over how this works. And then also in countries like European countries where the privacy laws are much stricter, how can technology be utilized to help identify clusters or outbreaks and identify where people are, even if it's anonymous data, to understand what to plan for. So for instance, a lot of conversation about we have this data

today, it's available to us. Is there a way to anonymize it to just simply prepare a region for an outbreak or by basically prepping medical providers saying, we know this one individual was in this location or these 10 individuals were in this location. And we know there were several thousand in Colts, Pasadena using cell phone data. Already, if you have an Android or an iPhone, which probably most of the listeners do, you'll know, probably have noticed at some point that there is an option to opt in to contract tracing where you can be notified. In some circumstances, this was on by default. I think some of that has changed depending on what type of phone you have and what version of software. But the next step is how do you use that data and keep someone

anonymous to keep it anonymized to at least prepare or get information out to people. So maybe one of the conversation threads that I saw was maybe they don't know who you are, but they send a message saying, you know, you were in an area that multiple people were exposed to test and to quarantine. So that's something that is actively being talked about now in the tech space, and we'll continue to monitor that because I do think it will, in fact, all of us at some point, affect all of us, this privacy piece, not infect. Just wanted to clarify that.

TikTok continues to be scrutinized by governments throughout the world. The United States has issued several different kind of mandates to TikTok and potentially banning because it is partially owned by a Chinese company. I think Europe just basically said on July 13th that there needs to be some changes. And as of July 13th, you will see in Europe, July will be the day that Europe no longer targets TikTok ads based on a person's data. So that falls under the Irish Data Protection Commission, as well as DRP. So we're continuing to see this move of privacy in Europe. I do see trends and laws occurring in the United States. I think this is a good thing. I think that certainly there are some

benefits to having targeted information, but if there is government oversight, I think it does afford us a little bit better protection from that standpoint. We're starting to see some chatter about Twitter. I think Twitter is one of the main sources for protests and civil unrest data that I use. And we're starting to see Elon Musk is trying to pull out of that deal that we talked about before. While that's going on, there are actually a lot of features being added to Twitter. Now you can do tweets collaboratively,

meaning that you and someone can do a tweet together. So Tony and myself could actually send a tweet out or read it myself together, meaning that we'd hit both of our user bases. They're also allowing for some level of mentioning and unmentioning. So there are a lot of different things. So for instance, you can actually remove someone from a tweet now and a lot of different features. I think it will help us here in our space monitor,

also allow us to use the platform differently. So it's certainly something to keep an eye on for all of us here at the LPRC. Because I think that Twitter is one of those feeds that we use very, very heavily. And then I think I'll end kind of with a message about phishing. So there has been a rash of and we've talked about this many times on the podcast here, phishing. So there has been a rash of, and we've talked about this many times on the podcast here, phishing, traditional phishing, that enticement to click a link. Well, now we're starting to see much more sophisticated attempts and tasks. These aren't necessarily new. I think they're just revitalizing it where you're starting to get emails that are callback phishing. So there is no click. This

gives the impression of less risk because you have to have human interaction. So an email that looks pretty legitimate, much like a phishing email, but as opposed to click for your privacy, please call this number. And then when you call the number, you're getting an operator asking you for an order number or asking you for some information. And basically they have a script to validate, to make you feel and validate that it's real. A lot of times they'll even say, you know, why don't you take my number though? So that in case we get disconnected and give, give another number that is something you can Google. So the general rule of thumb here is it doesn't change much from click. If you're not expecting something or you don't have an Amazon order that's out there, resist the urge to call the number.

Look on your Amazon account. Look in places that you know are controlled. I actually got a couple samples. One was very, very well done. And it basically was an Amazon order that said, this is a new process to validate orders. We saw a fraud on your account, a lot of really good information. They use a lot of redacted information. So it looks very legitimate. And then, you know, a lot of ID numbers and things of that nature, but then there's a phone number to call

and you're getting a call. And so this is not again, a new thing, but I'm starting to see a huge influx of this. And that has probably to do with some of the education and awareness around what I would say are traditional or regular phishing scams that we've seen in the past is now the red actor or the bad guy, the nefarious actor has to evolve with the changes. As we educate people on cyber awareness and we continue to talk about it, the traditional click are changing quite a bit. And so we're getting into this evolution of if I get someone on the phone and I apply this false sense of security, I may be able to get that same amount of data. Now, phone scams are nothing new. We've seen the calls where someone calls you.

Difference here is there is a psychological advantage of your calling them. So they actually have scripted responses of, sir, you called me. I didn't call you. You should be able to trust us. And it is a very good play on the psyche. And this is what we talk about all the time with social engineering. This is where social engineering comes in as manipulating human behavior. You have an order that's delivery is delayed or fraud or, you know, we're responding to your customer service request for a refund. We've also seen kind of the typical banking emails where we've detected unusual activity in our account.

We can't disclose it in the email. Give us a call at this phone number when you call. You know, don't give us a password or username. So really taking an extent of saying never give your password to anybody on the phone never give this information on the phone and then when you call them they're basically trying to get information from you actually had the the privilege of hearing a live call around an order scam and it was very well well where the person made a point to not ask anything. And the first call and said that, let me do some research and I will call you back.

It called back and then asked for some validating information and basically was trying to get personal information. actually sent while they're on the phone, a fake email, reset your password link, which required you to enter your old password to reset your new password. And that was, that was the choke, you know, that was the choke point of how they were getting the information. Very, very elaborate. These are 10, 12 minute kind of phone conversations to get to you to the point where you feel so comfortable. And again, they'll say that in this particular call, the statement was, I, you know, we'll never ever give your password to anybody on the phone. What we're going to do is we're going to send you a secure link so you can reset your password to make your account safe. And basically then sending a link

that says, you know, enter your current password to change very Very, very kind of time-consuming process for the bad actor, but a much, much different approach. So our advice doesn't change much. If you're not expecting an email or the same thing as don't click or download an attachment, don't make that call. Don't make that call if you're not expecting a package. Maybe my advice would be to go into an account. If you have an Amazon account, look for activity if you don't see it.

These messages do have some similarities in phishing where if you look very carefully at addresses, you'll see that there are slight changes. Variation in language and grammar is common in all of them. There's usually some sort of mistake. and language and grammar is common in all of them. There's usually some sort of mistake. Probably the most prolific that I've seen was a PayPal email that looked very, very good. There was one slight change in the email address, but other than that, it was very good. And again, not asking you to click on anything, asking you to pick up and call to validate something. So keep an eye out for that.

I think we're going to continue to see more of those. And with that, I will turn it back over to Tony and Reed. All right. Thank you so much for all that great information, Tom. Thank you, Tony, as well. I want to thank Diego as well as our producer. But most of all, I want to thank you all for listening. as well as our producer.

But most of all, I want to thank you all for listening. Please stay in touch, lpresearch.org, operations at lpresearch.org. We're here, we want to listen, we want to help learn about our 34 active research programs that are underway right now, more growing. Come visit us in the labs. Set up a visit via our email on our website. Come in here, meet with us, greet with us, tour with us, brainstorm. But everybody stay safe out there.

Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.