LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 125 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

2023 LPRC Kickoff in NYC is Ramping Up! Research Team members were present at CLEAR! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss the LPM/LPF event and the history of the organizations, the five terrifying trends for the retail industry as we end 2022, USA Holiday Retail Forecasts from Deloitte and Digital Commerce 360, the role of industry rates and the effects on the retail market, and a look at the midterm elections! Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 125 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. Today, the latest in our weekly update series, and I'm joined by co-host Tom Meehan and Tony D'Onofrio and our producer Diego Rodriguez. And we're going to kind of go around the world again, looking at opportunities, looking at threats, looking at upcoming issues. And I'll start off by talking about a little bit of debrief or download on having spent the last two weeks on the road to a certain extent. I've mentioned before at the International Council of Shopping

Centers, the ICSC had their annual security summit for their VPs and directors of security from the major and regional malls and shopping center owner operators. And just fantastic content with the FBI involved in working through some very interesting case studies, active assailant, in this case, active shooter case studies, breaking them down. We're in talks with the same group for featuring some of this information. It'll be updated and a little more expansive at an LPRC impact and or violent crime summit. We also, there was some great content on sort of homeless and the harm, but how managers and security manager in this case, working with local law enforcement, working with the local community, what they're starting to do and what they're seeing

with the homeless situation in malls. And again, a hot topic for us, something we're working on as well. So we're going to be combining a lot with ICSC. We're in talks and we're going to be doing a home and home. Their team will be coming here to Gainesville to our labs and doing some brainstorming and may go beyond that. So there was also other good content on training. And then our team went up, Peter Chee, Vice President of Asset Protection at Bloomingdale's. And then we also had Chris, who's the VP there at, off Saks Fifth Avenue. So we went through and laid out some of the issues that have been emerging, describing them, some of the issues that have been emerging, describing them, showing video clips that Peter had pulled together and were demonstrating everything from active assailants and other attackers, sort of gang fights that lead to violence and killing. What's going on, of course,

with some of the COVID-19, but the increased aggression in the parking lots, in the major mall areas, the central points or the common areas, the general areas, as well as in the stores, and what all the opportunities are to work together on these, as well as regular ongoing shoplifting boosters. And how do we work with malls? Some have security, some have lower level trained people, some have medium, some have very highly trained security teams, or at least people on their teams, vehicles and others. So there's a range, but how do we accommodate and work with each other in a better way to support each other, have common radio frequencies, more regular and very purposeful intel and tactics and training meetings, also with law enforcement partners. So it was partnership, partnership, partnership by understanding the

issues on both sides, too. What are barriers to sharing, barriers to having mall security support and vice versa? You know, there are certain concerns and things like that. So it was a really productive session. We were excited to be invited and participate with such a stellar group. We've already added a major, major mall owner-operator, Brookfield Properties, to LPRC membership as a result of that meeting. And we look forward, because of some discussions we're having with some others to the same thing as well as ICSC discussions. So great, great engagement and well worth everybody's time, I think, in Washington, D.C. Last week, Charlotte, the LP Magazine, LP Foundation, RELA, their ALPC.

I'm probably saying that wrong, but they that, but those groups, of course, meet annually. I've been going to that for probably close to 20 years now. That event, fantastic. Of course, originally scheduled to be in Sanibel Island. And as most everybody knows, that part of Florida has been heavily, heavily destroyed. And so that certainly wasn't possible. They're hopeful to maybe hold that event there next year in the same venue. It's just going to depend on the infrastructure and 100 other variables. You know, really over a quarter million, almost between a quarter and half a million Floridians' vehicles were damaged, Between a quarter and half a million Floridians' vehicles were damaged, heavily damaged to destroy during the storm on top of the roadways, infrastructure, sewage, electricity, power, reliable.

There's a lot of fixes temporarily in and everything. So it'll be complex. But at the meeting, a good turnout, it seemed like, in Charlotte, a little easier and probably even a bigger turnout, I understand, because it's just easier to get to and easier to explain, I guess, to the more senior people in the organization that you're going to Charlotte for a meeting rather than to, you know, Sanibel Island or something like that is what I heard. So just fantastic sharing by the solution partners, the retailers, the number ones. A lot of the number ones went on store tours. Some did not, but we all were, I think, got a lot of good interaction, meet new people, re-engage with people that we've known and so forth. Some good content and information and just a great event in that way. A lot of good sharing. So just excited to partner with the LP Magazine and with LP Foundation like we do here at the LPRC. And we look forward to more of that. We have a monthly call, a planning call with the foundation and the magazine, our team to look at joint opportunities

and activities, ways to support our research, supporting the training modules, the certifications, other certificates and other things that we can generate to support what they're trying to do. So good meetings, good outcomes, I think, and a good support for this industry. And I think it was acknowledged over and over with good reason, all the contributions by Jack Jalicia and by Jim Lee, the founders, two of the founders of LP Magazine. And the magazine, it's my understanding, was founded about a year, year and a half after LPRC. This was kind of a pivotal time in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 timeframe for a research council, for a magazine, a professional, well-done magazine. And then a couple, three years later, an actual foundation to establish some kind of regular training, recognized certifications at the LPQ and LPC levels. So, you know, just a lot of people that were visionary, worked very, very hard

against those that were readily accepting, those that wanted to see, and those that were very skeptical. And here we are. And I think that this combination has just been powerful in taking the retail segment of protecting people in places that are vertical to really unprecedented heights and continues to do that. And by all of us working together, coordinating, it's amazing what has and will be accomplished. So we're now pivoting to some of our events again. Those that are involved in LPRC or know a lot about us know that we have six events for our members and to a certain extent, sometimes others. But our calendar year starts off with LPRC kickoff this year, January 18th in New York City at Bloomingdale's flagship store the day following NRF Big Show at the big show and are excited to partner with NRF as well on the research on the National Retail Security Survey, on an Organized Retail Crime

Survey, continue to enhance and expand those, collect more data, combine those with another study that Dr. Lowe, Corey Lowe, our Senior Research Scientist at LPRC, has initiated and continues to grow ARCs, where we're getting data from individual locations, combining with these national surveys, are just going to provide a wealth of decision-making information. So at kickoff, we'll be talking a little bit about that. It's a planning meeting. It used to be 20 or 30 people that were in New York City. They're based there or in town for the big show and in the D&D Downing event, sort of a social event with always a great speaker like, you know, Commissioner Bratton and so forth. So this year, kickoff, January 18th,

So this year, kickoff, January 18th, LPRC members will be there. If you go to our LPRC website, lpresearch.org, members can go in there and can register and learn more about the events there. And it's a capped capacity. I think we can hold about 100 of us in there. So it is first come, first serve. And we are trying to, as always, have sort of a one-to-one ratio of a retail executive and a solution partner or two-to-one retailer. It's for everybody's good, and that's what everybody wants. Diego Rodriguez and Kim Refere and others on our team will be helping us create that and keep that balanced so that we have a very productive planning meeting, a lot of good engagement. We've got a cool content outlay coming up, which we'll reveal later. But to maintain that kind of

healthy ratio for everybody, they'll be kind of regulating that registration coming up february 21st and 22nd in in that time frame we're going to have lprc ignite that's a planning meeting as well for our board of advisors formally again i've mentioned the winter planning meeting uh this year uh we're going to have the same board of advisors meeting we now add lprc's Innovate Advisory Panel. 30 top retailers, their innovation people are on this advisory panel. They meet monthly. I know this has been mentioned before. And with now eight and soon to be growing solution partners that are engaged monthly to help us create and execute an innovation roadmap. and execute an innovation roadmap. And again, innovation can be tactical innovation for improving an anti-theft, fraud, or violence countermeasure through new countermeasures,

through sophisticated integration of countermeasures within a strategic design and an operational design. So, that group will be there, And as well as working group leaders, the co-leaders that we've got, there are going to be some special invitations for those people that do such a great job in helping us plan critical events. user experiences for all working group calls. Again, seven working groups that we've got, supply chain protection, violent crime working group. We've got the product protection working group. We've got DOG, the data analytics working group. We've got a retail fraud working group. So we've got a whole host of working groups, depending on what area somebody is working in it, and as well as an innovation working group that's working also to support all of the working groups and the Innovate program. So look for all those. The other summits that we've got coming up will have Integrate, LPRC Integrate,

which will be part of the Ignite experience in February in Gainesville at the UF Innovate Hub and at the Rites or other venues, depending on the size of the group that we're trying to get in there. That's a part of our strategy planning coming up this week. But you'll see also that integrate summit. I'm going to go through the use cases in more detail and up and coming. I've mentioned the first one will be anti-theft and what we're going to be doing to exercise Zone 5 through online postings and looking at scrapers and crawlers and ways to more quickly connect, excuse me, collect and connect the dots for any pending theft, fraud, or violence threat that we might have. That's going to be coupled with now the two or three red actors, the red guys, the red shoppers, the offenders in this case will be our team.

A couple, three of them will then, after posting, will be heading toward us and move through and exercise. All of our sensors are ready to cross the four square block area, of course, all the way up and through the simulated store environment and beyond as they make their journey to and from to commit that crime or that harm you know left at and right of bang or contact so we're excited to work on that at integrate that again will be in february 21st and 22nd this will be unprecedented coupling and integration of sensors and action tools across all five zones in a way that's just never been done. It's not just designed to be a showcase or a demonstration, which it will be both. It's designed to start the ball rolling for us to improve at each point throughout the zones,

that better earlier detection and understanding, better deterrence, better disruption, and of course, better documentation in an integrated way, better notifications to the right people at individual places and spaces and at, say, the security operations center or EOC or command center level. So this is going to be the beginning, not the end. And in doing that, we'll also be working on some of the category management so that we can better demonstrate and integrate and improve across and inside the engagement lab or simulated store environment. Look for that in that mid-February timeframe. March 28th and 29th, we've got the Supply Chain Protection Summit location or venue to be determined and announced soon. The Violent Crime Summit looks to be in Houston, Texas, April 18th and 19th. More details to come there. Both of those working groups are already hard at

work on those, as well as the Product Protection Summit will be May 23rd and 24th, probably online like we've done with voting and more and more innovative ways to look at anti-theft devices and sensors throughout the five zones. It's really going to be a neat event and continues to grow. And of course, our big one for us is October 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in Gainesville on the University of Florida campus, and that's going to be LPRC Impact. Now our big challenge is not getting growing this event too large. You know, we had over 400 executives in town, and that's despite Hurricane Ian bearing down on the state of Florida and even predicted to possibly head our way. So we might have hit our limit. You know, we're not sure we

can go somewhere between four or five hundred is probably the physical limit unless we become more innovative how we break people up and move them around. So but that's October 2nd through 4th. So please put it in your planning and your budget and your travel schedule, those events that we're very, very excited about. J.C. Atkinson and Orion San Angelo at the CLEAR conference, the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, combined with FLIPRU, which is the Florida Property Recovery Unit. In other words, all the property crime investigators from all the 67 sheriff's offices and all the police departments throughout the state of Florida. So you're looking at between five and six hundred law enforcement and retailers there. We've got a donated booth area. We're great partners with Clear and Flea Pro and those teams and vice versa. In fact, we had a lot of the Clear board, their board at LPRC Impact that we just had in 2022 in Gainesville.

They had a meeting in conjunction with Impact so they could all participate in Impact. So, you know, that's the way it's got to work. Working to support the Food Marketing Institute, FMI, working to support RELA, Retail Industry Leaders Association and NACS and NACDS, the chain drugstores and things. So stay tuned for all that. So let me, with no further ado, go turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony, if you would, take it away. Thank you, Reid. Let me start this week with a couple more forecasts of what will happen this holiday season for the USA retail industry. The four key findings from the latest Deloitte forecast include number one, the consumers will make celebrating a priority. Household finances may be the weakest level in the dedicated

but spending stays steady if consumers cut non-essentials to give gifts and socialize. essentials to give gift and socialize number two low income regaining holiday cheer after pulling back last year low income shoppers are feeling more confident and plan to spend 25 percent more this year number three inflation shrinks the shopping window given the economic environment consumers plan to buy fewer gifts Reducing the shopping durations to 5.8 weeks versus 6.4 weeks and number four shoppers are off to an early start inflation and

Stockout concerns from shoppers to get out of a jump on the holiday shopping season with 23% of budgets already spent by the end of October. That's amazing. That is amazing. 23% of the budget spent already by the end of October. Other industry, other interesting findings in the Deloitte forecast in terms of the holiday spending season, 37% report their financial outlook as worse when compared to last year. 74% said it will spend more or the same on the holidays than last year and 73% expect higher prices this year due to inflation. 23% expect higher prices this year due to inflation. Roughly 4 in 10 shoppers are looking to buy sustainable holiday gifts. 32% plan to buy resale items as a way to offset rising prices.

49% plan to shop on key shopping days with Black Friday leading at 29% and Cyber Monday also leading at 30%. Those are the two most popular holidays. Shopping online takes 63% share on par with the last two years. In-store shopping continues to rebound, growing from 28% in 2020 to 35 in 2022 online retailers and mess merchants are the preferred holiday destinations and 34 plan to use social media as part of their holiday uh journey so those are some really interesting stats in terms of how this holiday season is shaping up. Looking at the online version of this, so switching to more detail

of what is expected within the retail sales online, let me summarize from Digital Commerce 360 their projections. As they stated, online retailers will have a tough go uh this holiday season trying to convince shoppers who are contending with inflation and recession fears not to skimp on their gift lists in 2022 u.s consumer digital spending in November-December will grow a modest 6.1% year-on-year. That's what Digital Commerce 360 projects. Digital Commerce 360 also projects that revenues will reach just over $224 billion during the holiday season this year, up from $211 billion the same two months in 2021. That means online sales growth will be in the single-digit range for the first time dating back to pre-2015, the first year for which digital commerce D60 data started being available.

That's a drop off from 2021's 10% online sales increase, which was already less than a quarter of the 40.8% surge in online seasonal sales during the COVID-19 fuel 2020. Retail sales through all channels, including physical stores, are likely to rise 4% for the season, digital commerce estimates. Shoppers will spend $916 billion just over that. Overall, with online and offline sales combined up from $881 billion, that growth will also be a significant slowdown from 21 when total retail sales grew 13.4%, but it's still higher than the medium, which is 3.2% in the five years before the pandemic. which is 3.2% in the five years before the pandemic.

As Digital Commerce 360 summarized, inflation would magnify consumer price consciousness and leave many online shoppers less willing to spend as much on holiday gifts as in the past. Shoppers expect deeper discounts and they will rely on more comparison shopping and price matching. So interesting that this is going to be a challenging holiday season based on the recession and inflation fears and what's happening online. And finally this week, let me summarize a very

interesting blog that I read this week from a company in the UK called Floyd. And they list five terrifying retail trends. And they published it actually on Halloween, which was this week. The number one terrifying trend that they see is that Shrink, it's the $100 billion boogeyman the menacing blob of retail shrink continues to grow and grow threatening not just profits but future investments and even at the very nature of the way we shop theft organized crime and inefficiencies are are painting previously pristine white balance sheets and unfortunate shade of red.

But don't just take their word on it. The National Federation, again, was projecting nearly $100 billion in retail shrink. And actually, the actual number was 94 from previous podcasts. The number two terrifying trend that Floyd found is afraid of the dark. A worldwide energy crisis doesn't bode well for retailers to stay connected. In the UK, the rumor mill has been hitting a midwinter blackout for weeks, while in North America, retailers face the ominous threat of further rise in energy costs. Could your store estate cope without the power or missing Wi-Fi? What would happen if the lights went out? This is actually a major problem in Europe, a bigger problem than the U.S.

And Floyd, I should have said at the beginning, is a U.K.-based company. The number three terrifying trend trend the cost of living crisis uh the undead have had a difficult but only the living have to cope with today's horrifying costs of living in the us canada and uk inflation hit a 40-year high north american consumers are struggling with rising interest rates and soaring health care costs, while European mortgage rates and energy bills only ever seem to creep up. Globally, retailers face a devilishly difficult choice this fall. Pass additional costs on the consumer by raising prices or freeze prices and suffer lower profits. And don't forget the looming threat of reputational damage too,

as some of the news that's been going on around the world implies. Number four, labor shortages. Normal Halloweens see bodies everywhere, but retail is suffering from a shortage of souls willing to enable to take and available to staff shop and other industry position. Last month, the British Retail Consortium suggested UK retailers have 100,000 positions vacant, while figures revealed U.S. retail itself is suffering an acute labor shortage, and it is a high quick rate of around 4% over the summer.

Canadian retailers are also struggling to fill retail roles. Can retail operation cope with a skeleton staff? And the number five trend, dwindling loyalty. Abundant choices and multi-channel competition means customers are less likely to remain loyal to brands unless they are given additional reason to stay faithful. Personalization, a sharper brand purpose, and an improved customer experience can stop the churn, but many retailers live in fear that a monolithic system can cope with the additional pressure that is coming on branding. And I fully agree with the five trends. These are something that we need to keep in mind and we will keep speaking to on this podcast going forward.

So with that, let me turn it over to Tom. Well, thank you, Tony, and thank you, Reid. Another exciting episode of Lost Prevention Research's Crime Science in the weekly edition. Lots going on today in the world. So this week, the Fed will make their announcement, the anticipation of a rate hike of probably three quarters of a percent, potentially one full percent. We'll see how that affects the market and retail in general. I wanted to just kind of touch base on the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband in San Francisco in her home. This sparked, you know, a resurgence of feds,

both the FBI and Homeland Security and a couple other agencies, of feds, both the FBI and Homeland Security and a couple other agencies, warning that domestic violent extremists pose a heightened risk in 2022 around the midterm elections. We've been speaking about this regularly about the fusion net. And in the event that there is civil unrest around the midterm elections, we will activate the fusion net. We're also paying close attention to this. This is a tough one because there has been, as we talked about previously on the podcast here, there have been just an unattainable amount of threats of violence through social media and other intelligence platforms. of violence through social media and other intelligence platforms. Telegram is one, Twitter is another of where there are a heightened sense of threats. It's very hard to determine what is an actual threat, a credible threat, and just an angry rant. So this creates quite a bit

of noise around how you manage these threats. And obviously, we know that January 6th, the Capitol insurgency happened. So there is definitely today a much more closer eye looked at some of these things. But it's very hard to really stay on top of it. to really stay on top of it. The Department of Homeland Security regularly shares information regarding heightened threats and threat environment

with federal, state, and local law enforcement officials to ensure that the safety and security of all communities across the country. And that was a quote from DHS. However, this is one of those ones where there's just a tremendous amount. So stay tuned. We'll certainly be continuing to watch this here and make sure that if there is, in fact,

elevated civil unrest, that we will activate the fusion net. Switching gears a little bit, the FBI issued a warning about people using ride share services to abduct minors. This is a public service announcement. The FBI said that while it's rare, we're being notified of a larger or an increase of these events. public and rideshare companies of criminal actors leveraging rideshare vehicles to abduct minors due to the lower likelihood of detection and ease of you know ease of facilitation so this is something that we've talked about before where you know when most of i think if you if you're over 30 you probably remember never get into a stranger's car. This was actually something I spoke about many years ago, but the risk plateau changing. And now it's commonplace to get into a stranger's car.

And the app gives you this kind of false sense of security, if you will. I use ride shares literally every day. I travel quite a bit. So it is uncommon to be in an Uber or Lyft several times a week and even internationally using some of the other ones. So I think that this is just something to be aware of. I think it is rare based on the reports, but it's just something that as we continue to evolve with technology, there will be more information coming out about this.

there will be more information coming out about this. This kind of stems from several instances where back in February of 2021 in the Colorado area. So this is not necessarily something that is rampant. And then there was another case in April in Dallas. So we often talk about here the bad actors. Do you take advantage of technology? This is another one of those things just to be aware of. By no means is it a suggestion to not use rideshare apps. It's just a suggestion to educate people on validating license plates, making sure you're getting in the right car, making sure that if your children are using it, that there's some form of communication with them when they are using Rideshare. So definitely something to stay on top of. And then my last FBI warning today will be related to ransomware. There's a ransomware group targeting poorly protected VPN servers. targeting poorly protected VPN servers. So when we talk about VPNs and the use of VPNs,

what I often say is if it's free, it's probably not the best service to use. It could be better than anything, but you want to make sure that if you're using a VPN service that you have multi-factor authentication turned on and that if it is a free service that that's an option. The FBI is just basically continuing to educate folks which is great and this is one of those educational pieces that came up not suggesting that again you need to run away from VPNs. VPNs are a very important factor for all of us to keep safe. Your company VPN generally is definitely going to be the safest, but as we've talked about before, should be used for company business only. I think all of those things are things that we want to continue to talk about as these FBI warnings come up. Education awareness is the

key to success with cybersecurity. So I think when very much like all the things we talk about here with physical security and impressions of control, education awareness really, really does push and help the cybersecurity industry. So you'll continue to hear me talk about those things. I wanted to switch gears a little bit, just a little bit for zero COVID. China is kind of changing direction a little. They'll still pursue their zero COVID policies for locking down factories and apartment complex, even whole cities in response to any number of cases.

So we're hearing them very, very vocally talk about what they're doing. Foxconn, if you read the national news, had a story about Foxconn, which was one of the companies that made iPhones in China, how people were fleeing the factory before it got locked down. October 27th, there was a lockdown at Disney in Shanghai, and that was basically what occurred, and this is the second time. You're locked into Disney, you have to take three tests on three separate days in order to leave. So the zero COVID policy continues in China. What does that mean for all of us? Well, a lot of components, still more than 70% of electronic components are made in China. So that could

lead to supply chain disruptions in the future. One of the things here is that we are in this quasi chip overage now. We had a chip shortage, now we're catching up. So I'm not sure that will be the challenge, but production in general could be challenged in the next six to eight months. I think we've kind of gotten past some of these supply chain disruptions, but I'm not sure that we'll ever fully get away from that. Just something to be aware of and on top of. And, excuse me, I think the last thing is there was another report around hacking. A new report shows that hackers are selling about 570 corporate networks worldwide. Information accumulates to quite a bit of information.

They're basically going out and these are all the corporate networks in and they're trying to sell them in a lump sum for $4 million. What does that mean? In some cases, this is a different way of approaching this. We have network access to all these, buy it all and do what you will with it. This is another way hackers are just trying to monetize their business-minded people, so from ransomware to the way they're using or utilizing this information, will continue to evolve as we continue to evolve with it. So I think that that's definitely something we'll continue to look at, these groups. And once some information becomes available, we'll share specifically what it is. We'll share specifically what it is. And I think that we'll continue to look at these ransomware and cyber instances to try to get information out to the podcast listeners about specifically what it's impacting. And my kind of last but certainly not least comment here is we continue to see outages with major services.

Instagram had an outage. WhatsApp teams had an outage out in the European market. Just keep that in mind as we become more and more reliant on technology. We sometimes forget some of those basic things that we need in business. And what do I mean by that? Well, gone are the days where we have everybody's phone numbers memorized. Gone are the days, in most cases, where we have a handwritten book of phone numbers. I would recommend that if you're in a SOC or in a virtual SOC environment, that you think through that notebook or binder mentality because I was at a conference and security intelligence conference in Los Angeles and we were discussing all of these stop gaps for when technology goes down and a very large corporation said well we use Slack and Teams

and there was one event where Slack and Teams was down and we had to find the binder and realize that it wasn't updated. So this is just a word to a reminder of don't forget the old way of communication. Write down phone numbers somewhere, write down contact information and do your best to stay on top of it. And I would not rely on that beautiful device that we all carry as 100% foolproof because we are seeing major, major, large corporations having massive outages, which should be expected. But if that's your only means of communication, your only means of connecting with that coworker, it does pose a significant challenge if you have an event. With all of the uncertainty globally, I would suggest strongly that you re-look at the way communication is being done today. And if you are reliant on a platform to make sure that you have multiple backup metrics.

I often hear, well, we'll text message if we can't. Well, there's been times where that goes out as well. And then sometimes it's a trusty landline. But just a reminder, it was at that conference, I thought it was a good reminder with all of the recent events of major outages for Microsoft, Google, social media platforms. Why did I mention social media platform? Because believe it or not, that sometimes is a good backup because they are, in most cases,

most of them have end-to-end encryption messaging. So Facebook, for instance, has end-to-end encryption messaging. The challenge with Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram is they're the same organization. So not definite, but there's a likelihood if one goes down, they could all go down. So just a kind of just a reminder there that if you don't have that down, maybe when you're listening to this, you grab your notebook and you write down some key phone numbers, because we're also very different than we were before from a standpoint of our brains have been trained that you don't need to remember phone numbers because they'll be in that phone that's in your hand.

And with that, I will turn it back over to Tony and Reed. All right. Well, thanks so much for all that information, Tom. And congratulations again to Tom Meehan for his well-deserved promotion to president of ControlTech. Huge move. We're all proud of you. And we're looking for greater and greater things out of ControlTech and what you're doing to support the industry and LPRC in so many different ways. And congratulations, Tony, for your son's pending marriage, those nuptials. So I know that's a proud moment for you and your family. And I want to thank Diego for all his production and him, his patience and him trying to herd cats with myself and Tony and Tom racing all over the U.S. and sometimes the globe and a hundred other things. So getting this to sit down and do this together sometimes or

separately. So thanks everybody for listening. Always reach out to us, lpresearch.org or operations at lpresearch.org. We're here to support you. And from Gainesville, signing off. Thank you. 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.