LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 69 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

Vaccines hoping to protect against long term effects! LPRC IMPACT Content better than Ever! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including a change in masking policies, differences between Covid vaccine and other vaccines, Benefit Denial Technologies expand, and holiday shopping is shifting more and more online. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 69 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. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-s sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP related events and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to

improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. Welcome everybody to another episode of LPRC's Crime Science, the podcast. This is our latest in our weekly series. I wasn't here last week as I was with Kroger Company and 15 different solution partner companies brainstorming, to a certain extent, the future of asset protection. And so we're going to kind of start there a little bit. And as usual, I'm joined by our producer, Diego Rodriguez, and co-host Tom Meehan of ControlTech,

and also Tony D'Onofrio of ProSecure. tech and uh also tony d'onofrio of pro secure and uh so i usually start out on the weekly talking about the coven 19 situation and we will but i think the lead-in here is to we're going to kind of bookend a little bit with talking a little bit about crime control um and then there are links there clearly with virus control and then uh when tom on, we're going to go back to crime control as well. So, you know, we all know that the way that, let's say, a pathogen, or in this case, a crime event occurs, really contains a couple of components, right? And so the likelihood that something to happen, that is going to happen is one thing. What's the probability or likelihood? Another component is if something happens,

how severe is it likely to be? Are we likely because of certain background factors and foreground factors to have a heart attack or not a cardiac event? Are we, and then if we do, how serious is that likely to be? And that's partly based on other factors as well. And so the same thing with a crime event, how likely is an individual to be robbed or assaulted or otherwise, or a place to be victimized, theft, fraud, or some other violence like armed robbery, for example. So those are the things that we look at as scientists. That's what the practitioners, you all out there look at, Tom, on the podcast is one. So how do we look at the probability or likelihood of being

victimized and how well do we handle that? And that's the two components and that's exposure. well, do we handle that? And that's the two components and that's exposure. So if I go walking down a street that's known to have had quite a bit of crime activity at 2 a.m. in the morning, I have exposed myself and increased my risk of being victimized, a crime against person in that case. Now, the severity of that, if in fact there is a victimization, let's say zero to one, one, yep, got victimized. Somebody came up with a knife or a gun or pretended to and said, give me all your money, give me your wallet, whatever it might be, your smartphone. So we're at one. Now, how severe is that likely to be if there's injury or death? But also, even before that, we talk about on here a lot about trauma and the role that plays for an individual. It can be immediate. It can also be persistent. And even through

epigenetics, sometimes severe trauma can be passed on to a subsequent generation through DNA, believe it or not. So, you know, there's a lot going on here. But the point is how I expose myself to risk to potential offenders. Those are going to want to victimize another. Me, in this case, plays a role in the same thing with now how well do we handle that is the other part of the equation. So with the store, the same thing, where we place that store and then how well we handle the risk are two different parts of the same puzzle. That's why you have organizations like CapIndex that are trying to better understand and provide and prognosticate what the risk level is in a given area based on prior crime activity, based on the built environment, you know, based on who's nearby, how easy it is to get to and from and so forth. So a building that's in one spot, a store, could be exposed to a lot more risk than another store that's a few blocks away because it's different dynamics. And so their risk exposure is on a spectrum or on a continuum there. And so the same thing, though, with how well they

handle that risk. You might have two stores in a very high-risk place, environment, same strip center, or across the street from each other with equally high risk exposure. There's a lot of offender clusters nearby. It's easy to get to and from. There are places that help facilitate and enable that crime. It's all about place and crime and interaction with motivated or likely offenders. But also, how well do they handle that? And that's where we have audits and loss prevention, asset protection, of course. How well are we protecting ourselves? What are we doing with procedures and with the structure itself and with technologies and training and so on to protect ourselves, to mitigate, to reduce not just the risk exposure.

That's difficult. We're already there, but the exposure to severe risk. And so the point is, we'll come back to this later, and this is what we're all about. And when we were at Kroger last week, we talked about these dynamics about place and crime, the huge role that that plays because of risk exposure, but it's integrated and interacts with humans. Those are really likely to offend. The more of those people and the more attractive you are and so forth, you're more likely to be victimized by those people. But then also, how well could we protect ourselves? Are our people vigilant, trained? Do we have good

solutions and technologies and procedures? Are our local guardians, in other words, the police officers, deputy sheriffs that help protect us, are they on alert and standing by to help us when needed? And that's why just a quick tie-in to the virus, and we have talked about this many times. virus, and we have talked about this many times, but again, how well, how exposed am I or somebody else to somebody who is viremic shedding viral particles through their breathing and singing and talking and yelling and sneezing and coughing? You know, that's what it's about. We see with the Delta variant, there's just evidently, according to research and a lot of different, very scientific research studies around the world, the Delta and Delta plus variants just seem to generate a lot more viral particles than anybody that's exposed to them, whether you're vaccinated or not vaccinated. And as we've long talked about on this podcast, you know, there's not sterilizing vaccines here.

They don't eliminate and reduce the probability that somebody's infected at all. What they do is, at least with these more prolific variants anyway, do that kind of thing. And we've used the seatbelt analogy. We know a seatbelt does not prevent accidents. It wasn't designed to prevent accidents. It's not going to stop a vehicle from colliding with you or you colliding with another vehicle or a light pole or whatever. It's just not designed to do that. It doesn't eliminate injury or death either. If we hit a light pole or somebody collides with us, we can still be injured or even killed or our loved ones, even if we're seat belted in. It doesn't matter. It's not going to eliminate that possibility. But what it does do, of course, is it restrains our bodies, you know, from movement forward

or sideways, you know, so we're not ejected from a vehicle or propelled through the windshield or even hit the steering wheel or windshield. So it reduces the probability of injury and the seriousness of injury, but it doesn't eliminate the risk of an accident. It doesn't eliminate the risk of injury or death. So these things with vaccines are just not going to keep us from being infected. Nobody's ever made that claim. Their hope is that maybe some of the nasal, the missed ones might provide a little bit of that protection, but nobody knows. Is this a systemic protection, not local protection?

So if we inhale particles from somebody that's nearby us, that's unmasked and we're unmasked or masked or whatever, depending on the particles, there's a lot more of them now with these new variants. We're more likely to ingest some of these and now we are infected. And if we now talk or sneeze or cough, then we also are putting out the viral particles. And that's how a virus viruses. That's how it moves around and becomes viral. You know, that's how things are transmitted. So I think it's the same thing with crime that we're trying to understand that, you know, if we have a good parking lot zone for protection, if we have good zone four to three, you know, that transition from outside to inside more at the door, as Walmart says, establishing the impression of control there. If we have good

guardianship inside that place, that store, that distribution center or office environment, good guardianship inside that place, that store, that distribution center or office environment, we still can have crime events occur. We know that. There's no guarantee, but it can reduce the probability and it can reduce, that's deterrence, and it can reduce the severity potentially. And that's through that disruption of the individual. They don't get what they want or as many as they want, or they desist or stop their attack or whatever, because of some of the individual. They don't get what they want or as many as they want, or they desist or stop their attack or whatever because of some of the things we've done to protect ourselves. So the analogies are incredible. And those of us that are scientists and practitioners in the area of crime prevention, asset protection, loss prevention, what we see with the virus and other pathogens,

And what we see with the virus and other pathogens, it's incredible the parallels that we have to learn from each other and to think about these things. But those of us, again, I think that are trying to pay attention to scientific research in crime prevention, scientific research in viral protection, go with, as they say, the science, but understanding and science is nothing more than logic models and frameworks. And again, understanding how do these things work? How does a person leave their tent, their home, their cave, whatever, and in their apartment and, and move through space and time to victimize another person, take advantage of them to commit theft, fraud, or violence? What are all the places that they go and the things that they think and do and say throughout that journey to crime? And left of bang, we call it right, just like in the military, bang is the actual crime attempt itself or the event. victimize somebody? What does that look like? And that's what we talked about out there in Cincinnati with Kroger and the team was these are the pathways, just like with a virus, but these are the pathways of a criminal offender, the red guy, right, as they victimize the green person. And the green person is the legitimate place manager, the worker, the delivery person, of course, the shopper, customer, how do they do that?

And what's that look like? And what are the aiming points for us to better understand what's going on to have better intel information, to have sentinels through sensors that would pick up on somebody and say, I'm headed so-and-so to take care of business or to do this or to do that. of business or to do this or to do that, if we see them, we have facial recognition, feature matching technology, and so on, say, okay, this person that said that they're armed and dangerous and they're heading here, they're here, or they're in the parking lot now that provides that heads up. So what do we do? How do we do it?

And by us understanding through science that there's a framework, there's a logic model about how things work and how the things that we do about it work themselves to, again, deter, disrupt, or if that doesn't work, to document the individual, document the event so that we can take action to take them out of circulation as victimizers. So I wanted to just kind of touch on that briefly. And as we go forward, that's what we do at the LPRC at the University of Florida on the crime prevention research team is try and make sense of these things, break it down, and then conduct rigorous research and development around affecting behavior at each of those points so that we have much safer places and the vulnerable much better safeguarded. So we're looking at multi-system effects from the Delta virus. And we talked about the transmission and why are we having long COVID from any of the different variants. And

I still have family and friends that are experiencing that. There's clearly, it's a systemic multi-system effect. It's not a virus. It just makes us cough and wheeze a little bit, even though that can be the case in many of us and probably most that are affected or infected that get some disease response from that infection. But it seems to be some kind of vasculitis that the blood vessels have some leakage and that there's some damage done, whether it's short or long term. I guess research and time over time will tell us. We know on the vaccine front, you know, again, all we're trying to do is raise the alarms. We don't have another September 11th or Pearl Harbor where we're caught unaware our immune system, our innate and adaptive immune systems

are not there, that there's an antibody, a proper response, that there's a proper cellular or, you know, killer T cell response and so on, as the scientists say in that area. We know right now that there are 75 preclinical compounds going on, molecules or vaccines, rather, that are being tested. And there are now 99 vaccines in clinical trials. We've kind of tracked this. More have moved into human clinical trials. 54 in phase one. They're looking at initial safety profiles, trying to understand how it affects humans from a safety profile standpoint

or what kind of effects or side effects. 39 in phase two, larger trials now looking at dosing as well as safety. 32 candidates, vaccine candidates in phase three, large scale, randomized controlled trials as well, looking again at safety and efficacy of the vaccine. We know that 11 have the emergency use authorization with eight approved elsewhere in the world. The two that are in FDA approval process, again, being the Pfizer BioNTech and then the Moderna, the mRNA vaccine candidates that we're using right now. And I know that there are roughly 350 million doses of those two plus the Johnson & Johnson Janssen one-shot vaccine are out there, but the

approval process evidently continues. A big part of the approval process is re-examining all the data, continuing to follow all those candidates that were in phase three trials in the U.S. or potentially elsewhere, following again to see the efficacy and safety of the vaccine for them, as well as looking at other data. And my understanding, too, is doing job site inspections and audits of any and every place that touches the vaccine. That's all part of the process. So it takes a while. It takes months or years to approve these things because it's so exhaustive and extensive. So that's a little bit about that. You know, something else that's pretty interesting, at least in my opinion, I guess, is that, you know, the vaccine reactions people have been concerned about in young people, myocarditis, not my area, but myo, of course, being muscle in the cardio.

And so there's some inflammation or infection there. It looks like an infectious, I'm sorry, inflammation response. you're seeing that response in about 1 in 20,000 people under the age of, say, 16 or 18 in the studies now. And there's so much research and so much observation by all types of independent panels and FDA scientists themselves, as well as the institutions that are involved. But it looks to be, according to Dr. Offit and others, infectious disease faculty at different institutions, one in 20,000 almost all evidently are self-resolved and so on, even though some could be more serious. But what they also found in the research is that but with COVID, if children in that same demographic are infected with COVID-19,

if children in that same demographic are infected with COVID-19, one in 40. So one in 20,000 if you're vaccinated, one in 40 if you're not and you contract the disease. So just to kind of put it in perspective, at least for me, the non-vaccinated in the United States is pretty interesting too. There's always a popular narrative out there, but it really looks like about in the most vulnerable groups, let's say those that are 65 and above, 92% of 65 to 74-year-old Americans have now been fully vaccinated. 87% of those that are over 75, a lot of them just aren't able to be vaccinated by anything. But we've got massive, huge penetration. And that started really as soon as the vaccines were authorized in 2020, getting that kind of penetration. And so that's the good news. But you're seeing some other interesting demographics. About 59% now, over 59% of white American adults have now been vaccinated.

So we're not quite at 60%. You're seeing that about 50 or less than 50% of African American, Black Americans are vaccinated. Just under 50% of Hispanic Americans are vaccinated. 50% of Hispanic Americans are vaccinated. You're seeing that if you look at an urban and rural breakout now, about 45% of urban dwelling American adults are vaccinated, 39% of rural. So there's not a massive difference there. I'm not sure if it's just a significant difference or not, but you're seeing that whatever the narrative is in your hearing or in your mind, They're saying that whatever the narrative is in your hearing or in your mind, it really looks like there are some differences, but not dramatic differences by voter group and by age and race and so on. But there are some.

But with the young people, 18 to 24, 25 percent of those adults are now vaccinated. So that's the most resistant group it looks like right now, with at least a third saying that they are not interested in becoming vaccinated against COVID-19 disease. And about 25% of Black and Hispanic, and just above double digits with white Americans saying they will not be vaccinated. So according to some brand new survey data that are out there. So anyway, interesting news. We'll go over to Impact Conference, and that's rapidly approaching. As of right now, it looks like all full steam ahead, a continued record enrollment and sponsorship and so on going on for that event. Content, again, in my opinion, is amazing. The learning lab breakouts, the main stage content, the lab tours and the events that

we're going to have. We're not just going to have an event where people sit around and drink and there's a poster by the sponsor. We're going to have that component, of course, with good food and beverages, but we're going to have a nice, on that Monday evening, the 4th of October, you're going to see the way Diego's orchestrated this. It's going to be a real experience to understand the five zones of influence, but how we increase effort, risk, and reward to deter and disrupt offenders, how we do that through the five zones of influence, but how we increase effort, risk, and reward to deter and disrupt offenders, how we do that through the five zones.

That'll be combined with the lab tours, the five physical labs in the UF Innovate Hub complex, where we'll have it this year, which is a beautiful, spacious complex inside and outside of the building. spacious, complex inside and outside of the building. Think about 10 times the size of what we had before at Impact that were heavily attended and enjoyed by all, as well as the parking lot zone for lab tours that we'll be having outside with lighting and all kinds of cool stuff. The Tuesday evening social event, always a big hit in the swamp, the stadium up on the Champions Club level. Look for some great music, great barbecue and food, great beverages, and a lot of good interactions up there going on.

And so we're looking forward to it. Go to lpresearch.org to enroll now, or if you're a solution partner, to get on board and sponsor and take advantage of the amazing LP decision makers, AP decision makers that will be involved in the impact conference. So that's it from this front. Multiple research projects going on, probably over 35 right now by the research team, Kenna Carlson, Corey Lowe, and Mackenzie Kushner, supported by Natanya Cruz, and myself working on a myriad of different projects. So let me, with no further ado, go over to Tom Meehan. Tom, can you kind of fill us in from your standpoint? Sure. Got a lot of great stuff that you went over. A lot going on. I'll just kind of touch on a couple of things. One, it's basically in every newspaper, in every major news publication. I'll read what the Wall Street Journal masks are back on at Home Depot, I mean, in most cases, what they're referring to is that the retailers are going to have their employees. And in some cases, if not all that I

read so far, it's still optional for customers. I think the media sometimes does a little doom and gloom when you read, when I read some of these stories, it was really heavily on, you know, could there be a second wave? But the reality here is, as Reid talked about actually reading an article that most vaccines that are given to children. So MMR, for instance, which is widely given has a reaction at one in 16,000. So it's actually more common. And, you know, that's one of those things where one in 20,000 is actually pretty good for the vaccination. And to your point, most of the time it's mild. People can have just allergic reactions to anything. So I thought that was really interesting because, you know,

my kids do not have COVID yet. They're too young, but they have every other vaccination. So I was starting to read in comparables of what it looked like compared to everything else. So maybe on a different episode, we'll talk about that. I wanted to talk about something that's been in the news. And I think as long as I can remember being in the LPRC, which goes back quite a bit now, benefit denial and the announcement that Home Depot had made about benefit denial being instituted in power tools. I'm sure if you're a LPRC member and you have been for more than 10 years, you probably remember some of the conversations around software and gift cards and things that, you know, what it really comes down

to is if you buy it, it doesn't work until, you know, you get that code activation or an activation. And I remember, I think it was about 15 years ago, watching someone at an LPRC talk about how you can no longer buy software without an activation code at the end cap. And I remembered thinking to myself, then when is it going to transition? I also, if the listeners aren't aware, there are a lot of electronic devices, TVs in particular, that again, I think Reed was directly involved in a lot of this, that where there was a benefit that I'll put in where basically if you steal a flat screen TV in certain instances and you don't have an activation code, it's rendered useless. You

just have a big box. And so Home Depot has taken the move to do this towards power tools and using a Bluetooth technology to activate the tool. So in a very simplified approach, if you buy this tool, it's activated through a Bluetooth technology. If you stole this tool, it's activated through a Bluetooth technology. If you stole this tool and left the store without paying for it, you would have a useless or a rendered useless tool. And so this is a big move because this is true benefit denial. This is actually taking away, you know, when we see it, fear, get it, or this really takes away the benefit from the bad guy. They read, if they read a sign that says the tool doesn't work, if you get an activation code,

they're going to probably move on. So I was asked a couple of questions, you know, and I'm by no means an expert on this particular technology, but Bluetooth, the level of encryption that Bluetooth uses, could it be broken? Absolutely. But the reality is that it would take a lot more than the average individual to hack this. And the idea here is that it's going to sort off a huge percentage. I don't believe today that you would find anybody who would be willing to take the time to hack it right now. It would cost them more than what it's worth. And actually, some of those TVs, there was some stories that years ago, oh, well, you can get this hacked. And I would leave it to the equivalent of, do you want to pay $500 to hack a $200 TV or a $300 TV?

That's really what it comes down to. So this is a big, big move. And one of the things I really found interesting is it's obviously directed towards combating ORC, is that Scott Glenn and the Home Depot really, I think just about every major publication that you can think of, Business Insider had a really good piece about ORC and what the impacts would be. But then some of the offshoots that probably not everybody reads, like Hackaday and a lot of the cyber publications talked about it. And basically, the piece here is that the device isn't going to work until it's activated at the counter. So if you're going to the checkout counter, you're not going to be able to activate the tool. You're not going to be able to use the tool unless it's paid for.

So this is a big win and benefit denial. I also, and this is just my opinion, this is not the opinion of the LPRC or ControlTech or anybody else. I also think that if this is successful, you'll see it really widely adopted in other electronic or power devices that are out there. Keep in mind that the device does not need to be plugged in for this to work. So this is something where there's a Bluetooth chip inside, very, very small. They're really smaller than a quarter at this point, and they're battery powered and be able to be activated. So I suspect that we'll talk a little bit more as I get done here. I'll ask Reid if he has anything to add on it, but I just wanted to quickly touch on something that we

talked about. We've talked about for the last few weeks, because there's a better update of this massive, or what was told was a massive cyber attack that happened over the 4th of July weekend. And basically, two things that I wanted to just talk about briefly is one, this is a supply chain cyber attack. And what that means is that they went, the actors went after a service provider that had multiple people underneath it. And Qasim is the name of the company and they're a managed service provider software that helps companies stay up to date on patching. So they were attacked

and then basically it disseminated throughout their customer base. Two things to note. One, this is predominantly a commercial attack. It's not going to, that attack didn't affect many, if any, really people. And then the other piece here is that while it, you know, the announcements was that it was huge, it affected less than a thousand companies. And I'm not saying that that's not a significant number, but at the end of the day, small and medium-sized businesses, it affected. The reason I'm bringing this up, the supply chain

attack, is because this is another method to deploy ransomware. And what would happen is, and this is similar to the Chinese attack on Microsoft Exchange, as opposed to attacking 1,000 computers or hundreds of thousands of computers, you attack a central point that manages multiple and it disseminates. The other point to make here is that unlike other attacks where we talk about good cybersecurity hygiene, like not clicking on links, not sharing passwords, you don't really have any of those applications here because you have a managed provider that's providing a service that's actually spreading the malware or virus through your network without any human input. So this is a very different attack than when you

click on it. And I think we'll see more of these to come. And I don't think we'll probably talk about this one much more if we talked about it. But when we talk about ransomware, the other takeaway here is this is really the key importance of having a physical backup. Because in this case, your provider that's supposed to give you patches and protect you is actually the one disseminating the malware or the ransomware. And the only way really around to protect yourself there is to have a physical backup of your files so that if this happened, you could go ahead and start from scratch. So without really belonging this, what can you share? Because I know you were directly involved in some of these benefit denial.

And I know the LPRC played a huge role over the I feel like the last 15 years in the benefit denial world. What can you share about it? Right. Well, thanks, Tom. At this advanced age, it was actually 21 years ago, maybe almost 22 years ago. I published a journal article in the peer reviewed journal Security. Right. And the article is around crime and loss control dynamics and the ways that we do that you know the modes of action but anyway one of them was trying to move and add a new one into the list they're under situational crime prevention and the idea was to deny somebody the benefit of rewards um profiting from their crime, but to let them know that before

they even tried, before they attempted to steal in this case. And so it took me weeks. I got back to Bob DiNalardo after a lot of whiteboarding. And I said, I think it's called benefit denial. Let's call it that. We're denying somebody the benefits, so don't try. Why steal a hanger out of a hotel room that's those little knob ones? You can steal that hanger. There's no risk of getting caught probably. There's no effort problem here. You just pull it off and put it in your bag. But unless you steal the whole rack, you're denied the benefits. So I'm not going to steal a hanger, for example. So that was the benefit denial genesis. And it was awesome. Dr. Clark, Ron Clark, the Dean up there at Rutgers University, the inventor, the developer of

situational crime prevention and the matrix we use, it's so powerful. It added to effort, risk, reward, now benefit denial. And then we also have denial, whatever excuses and things like that. And then we also have denial, whatever excuses and things like that. And that's where it came from. But since then, it's been like this 22-year uphill battle to help people think about it. Now, a huge, huge exception in retail are the ink tax, the dye tax. That's not increasing effort to steal. It's not increasing the risk of being caught stealing, but it reduces the benefit or

potential benefit or rewards of the stolen goods. And so if it's got that device on there, now there are countermeasures, counter countermeasures, but that's, that's it. And it's really, we are so excited. I'm really excited you brought it up on the podcast because we did not just one, but two sort of summits, benefit denial summits hosted by the Home Depot in Atlanta. And it took this crew, it took Scott Glenn, the vice president up there and others to really see the vision and to see this effort through to broad, broad adoption across their chain. Now, Walmart, I will give them huge credit. They worked with us a lot on benefit denial. They still use it on some of their products. And I'd also say some people like Quicken and others, QuickBooks put some of the benefit denial technology on their own into their

products. But this Home Depot is probably the highest visibility, the most cross-adopted leverage. And like you said, this is true benefit denial. But anyway, that's my long-winded kind of retort, I guess, Tom, to what you bring in this up. And I'm really glad you did. Yeah. And I think just because this topic deserves it, maybe we'll continue to talk about it because I think we're going to learn a lot of what it, what goes out there. And I'm, I put some feelers out, you know, in some back channels to see what is being talked about on the dark web and what is being talked about in some of the more nefarious channels to see what the, the actors that are a little bit more professional are saying about it.

We often hear kind of what it is so far. The only thing that I've seen is sharing of the articles and kind of the conversation of, well, how would we defeat this type of chatter? It's still pretty new. So we'll definitely keep an eye on it. I think it'll evolve and certainly it's getting media attention, which is why the bad guys are talking about it. Because the bad guys, we often say this. The red customer does a lot of research, probably listens to this podcast if they're a professional one. And the great part here is that this is a very, very, very difficult thing to defeat.

And honestly, the amount of effort at this point to put in would would not equal the reward. of effort at this point to put in would not equal the reward. So I think this is a true benefit denial and it's a really exciting time in kind of loss prevention and asset protection. And with that, Reid, I'll just turn it back over to you for the ending. All right. Well, I appreciate this, Tom. And I couldn't agree more with you either on that last part in that to really get the effectiveness, efficaciousness that we're looking for, everybody realizes too, there's got to be this concentrated and long-term multi, I hate to use the term, multi-level marketing effort. But you're right, the good customer, the green, she needs to know or he needs to know this has a benefit than all device. You need to buy it

in order to get it. So if they have something that they somehow acquired, it doesn't work. They need to understand that it needs to be activated or they may have bought something that was stolen. Okay. So the in-store customer, the green shopper needs to better understand the employee has to much more thoroughly understand how, what this technology is and how it works so that they're on board and they routinely enable the product when it's legitimately purchased. But then you go to that secondary and tertiary level, and that's where the platform operators that do reselling that are out there, we know there's a ton of them. They need to understand this too. Look, if you get these goods in one of the shops on your site, some of this could be stolen goods. Well,

that's already going on where they're talking, it's happening. Plus retailers are working with them and legislators to combat the problem, but there needs to be an education. Look, buyer beware. If you're a good shopper, you go on one of these sites and we can, we can fill in the blank. There are 30 or 40 of them out there, including some that are household names. You need to buyer beware. If you buy something off there that's protected with benefit denial, it's not going to work. And the retailer is not going to take it back because it's probably stolen and so on. So, yeah, there's a lot of effort that's going to have to go into this to maintain the deterrence that everybody's looking for.

But it's really exciting to see it moving forward. I give all the credit in the world to the Home Depot and Scott Glenn and the team there for their efforts. So let me also turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony, building on this conversation we're having today, can you fill us in on what's going on in the United States and around the world as far as retailing? Thank you again. Great conversation again this week in terms of what's happening in LPRC and also with COVID. Let me add some industry data from

various sources. Let me start with chain storage and some early indication in terms of what's going to happen with holiday shopping this year. According to a new survey of consumers in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, 57% of the respondents plan to conduct the majority of their holiday shopping online. Three-quarters said they would purchase more from our website. That allowed them to message with an expert to ask questions and help them make purchases. And 62% said they would trust an online retailer more if associates were readily available on messaging. survey indicated that 63% of respondents said they would purchase more from a website that offered an artificial intelligence-based virtual assistant to help. Four in five, or 80% of respondents, said they would message from their phones while in the store if the store soldiers

were busy or unavailable. When online shopping, consumers report they would trust a virtual system to help with the following top three e-commerce activities. Number one, give updates on shipping and delivery, that's 87 percent. Number two, answer frequently asked questions, 85 percent. And number three, take down names and shipping orders, 80%. Finally, the survey also noted the percentage of respondents interested in the following virtual experiences at the start of the season. So 45% are interested in virtual showrooms, 44% are interested in viewing products in augmented and virtual reality. And 34% are interested in shopping while watching a live stream.

So as I've spoken many times before, live streaming is already over $100 billion in sales in China. And really, it's overdue to come to the West. So that's a trend that I see coming to the side of the world. So interesting how this holiday season is shaping up because of all the remnants of COVID. Also interesting this week for me from Statista was really an understanding in terms of what happens online or on one minute on the internet. So here's the estimated amount of data that's created on the internet in one minute as reported by Statista. In one minute, 28,000 new subscribers are watching Netflix. Nearly 700,000 stories are shared on Instagram. Over 9,000 connections are made on LinkedIn. 69 million messages are sent on WhatsApp.

500 new downloads take place on TikTok. 1.6 million million to spend shopping online, nearly 200 million emails are sent, and 500 hours of content are uploaded on YouTube. That reinforces what I've been saying for a while and have spoken to. We've generated more data in the last two years than we've generated in the entire history of mankind. So it gives you an idea how much data and how much data explosion is taking place. Let me also add some additional information from Tadista, which was interesting this week, which is the U.S. had a very robust quarter with GDP growing 6.5% in the second quarter. Once again, personal consumption was the main driver behind the upswing as private domestic investment and the trade deficit pulled down in the other direction.

pulled down in the other direction. Personal consumption by far was the largest contributor and it increased nearly 12% compared to the preceding quarter and an annualized rate. So again, and services were the main drivers of that consumer spending. But again, it gives you a clear indicator in terms of what's happening to consumers and the pace that consumers are spending. And finally let me talk about from retail dives some of the trends that will happen online versus in-store sales in our near future. And this is really is looking at in terms of the shifts that are taking place between shopping in physical stores versus online. The latest survey that they just published this past week indicates that the share

of online in-store sales will decline to 62.4% by 2025, which is down from 70% this year and down from 87% in 2015. Again, that's a trend that shows that online keeps growing, but again the vast majority of retail sales still take place in physical stores. The article also points out that the shift will not be smooth or cheap. Brick and mortars, as has been throughout history, as I just said, will remain the primary activity in terms of where shopping will take place. U.S. actually is different than the rest of the world. That stat that I gave you was for the entire world. Online sales in the U.S. are still rising and they will reach

23.6% of total retail sales by 2025. Store fulfillment and service are on pace to reach over $140 billion by 2024. And I'll close with one of my favorite quotes from that article, which says, quote, the store of the future must become a physical portal into brand and product experiences, becoming places where consumers can be inspired, learn, co-work, socialize, and experiment with new products while using digital touch points such as mobile phones and social media and other technology advancements to drive store traffic and enable physical stores to operate as part of a broader interconnected ecosystem. This would mean, among other things, that the store network will become an increasingly vital part of the last mile fulfillment.

So to me, physical stores will be a critical, critical component going forward. Still, the vast majority of where retail sales will take place, but they'll have to blend and really deliver our truly optimized, omni-channel or unified commerce experience because of consumers who can continuously switch between digital and non-digital activities. So a bright, bright future of retail, as I indicated in the recently updated disruptive future of retail that was delivered in the last several weeks online. So with that, some really good data. Let me turn it over back to Reed. Thank you. I want to thank everybody for joining us today on Crime Science, the podcast. Amazing dialogue. I really appreciate, again, Tom, for you curating some exciting topics for everybody.

And you can see the podcast. We're trying to help us and help all of you all think together about how these crimes occur and how things that we need to do about them work to deter or disrupt people and so on. That that's what we're trying to do is work together as one big LPRC research and results community. So everybody stay safe out there, lpresearch.org, operations at lpresearch.org for your questions, your comments, your suggestions. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. 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.