Cybercrime’s Hidden Targets: Why Underrepresented groups Face Greater Risks

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the underrepresented in tech podcast, where we talk about issues of underrepresentation and have difficult conversations. Underrepresented in tech is a free database with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech.

 

Hello Samah, how are you?

 

[00:00:20] Speaker B: I’m good. Hello Michelle, how are you?

 

[00:00:23] Speaker A: I am good also. It’s a Tuesday morning here. It has been raining for days, and the sun is out finally. So it feels good. But I must admit, over the weekend it was so hot I had my air conditioning on. But yesterday got so cold I turned my furnace on. And that is what it’s like to live in Rochester, New York. So, anybody who doesn’t live here, you can be glad that you are not air conditioning one day and you’re a heater on the next day. But only for a few hours; I just had to take away the chill and the damp. But I am the person who turned on her furnace in August.

 

[00:00:57] Speaker B: So anyway, it’s fine then. You’re perfectly trained to join the Netherlands or to live in the Netherlands because we have the same. It is 32 degrees, which is really hot. And then you have a rain, and you have your raincoat. It’s in the same three days.

 

[00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s close. And I don’t know if you have the same jokes over there that the dad always says, who turned the therm, the thermostat up? Like who turned the. You know, like I live alone. I could do whatever I wanted, and I could do it through my Amazon Echo or my phone. I don’t even have to go to the living room and touch the thermostat. So anyway, me, I love it.

 

[00:01:37] Speaker B: I do it through Nest, and it’s awesome.

 

[00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah.

 

[00:01:40] Speaker B: Sometimes you feel these 2 meters walking mentally when you sit on the couch and far away.

 

[00:01:47] Speaker A: So. Yeah, and my bedroom is at one end of the house, and the thermostat is at the other end. So if I wake up in the morning and I’m chilled to, I can just turn it up before I even get out of bed. I love it.

 

Anyway, this isn’t a weather podcast, so I suppose we should move on. But I just, you know, I like to share. Anyway, so I was thinking the other day about some things, and I know this is not a surprise to you, but just to bring everybody else into the conversation, I was wondering about the statistics on cybercrime and identity theft, hacking, things like that. And who is most susceptible now I know at least we’ve all heard that elderly folks are definitely more susceptible my own mother was swindled at one point in time. Luckily, I was able to get the bank to reverse the charges.

 

It was 400 USD, which is not nothing.

 

And it was quite a lot to her and her fixed income. And I got to thinking, I wonder who else could be victims of cybercrime? And so, as I was doing some research, I sent you, not just an article, I sent you the Google search link because there was so much about, and I think the term I used, if I can remember correctly, go back to our message, the term that I used was minorities at higher risk for cybercrime, just to see if that was accurate. And it was. It turns out that, and I’m looking at an article from Cyber Scoop right now. This is from 2021. I can’t imagine it’s got a lot better since then, of course. However, the article says that cybercrime is hitting communities of color at higher rates. Then they go on to say that black people, Indigenous people, and people of color are more likely to suffer from identity theft and financial impact from the fallout, according to survey data collected by Internet security company Malwarebytes. Now, before people think, oh, it’s, you know, the US and blah blah blah, I will tell you that this article actually studied people in countries, three different countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. So it is not just North America-centric because I know that we have a tendency to look that way because a lot of reporting happens that way internationally. But this one was not just US-centric. So, gosh, I have to say, obviously, I did the search because I had an inkling that that might be true. So I’m not exactly surprised, but I was a little shocked at how much data there was on how impacted, you know, people of color could be. Obviously, the articles that I saw also talk about people under 25 and people over 75. So the young and the old are also at risk. And I’m getting older myself, so maybe I shouldn’t say 75 is old, but it is still the older population.

 

I’m still over. I’m 20 years away from that, so. But still, it feels like it’s getting closer. But older and younger populations did not surprise me as much. But the fact that people of color and Indigenous people are impacted at a higher rate, especially with a financial loss, I have to say, was it was higher than I expected to see. What are your thoughts?

 

[00:05:15] Speaker B: I also was shocked about the numbers because I thought, like, usually a minority in general, if you’re talking people of color, women are having less money than others. So. But also with identity theft and other things. I was shocked by the numbers, and I was also shocked to know that during COVID, the rate was really getting higher and higher because people are spending more time online. I was reading about the reasons, or let’s say the several factors, why minorities are at high risk for cybercrimes, like social inequalities, lack of access to resources, targeted attacks, and a lot of things. But one of the things that really triggered my brain is what they’re saying offline and online violence attacks are related. So they, there was another search. They say that the same group of people who are being attacked online are the same ones who are also offline being attacked.

 

How can I say? It’s really amazing. I don’t say amazing; it’s not a good thing, but it’s really shocking. The numbers are not like we’re talking about 5% or 10%. There was another search; I was reading it. It’s like 54% of all cyber-attacks are for women, and 77% of them are for people of color. It’s so crazy, the numbers. And I don’t know how.

 

What to do, what people need to do to stop it. At the same time, the people who are responsible for the policies and people who are responsible for working for cybersecurity or focusing on attacks are not coming, most of them from those groups. So they’re not really focusing on solving that issue for the minority.

 

[00:07:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I made the connection that underrepresented can often mean under-protected.

 

[00:07:28] Speaker B: Absolutely right.

 

[00:07:29] Speaker A: So you think about all the things we’ve talked about between Ally and me before and you and me this year about how lack of resources and lack of access to resources also means lack of protection. When you think about it, a year and a half ago, two years ago, my daughter lived in Buffalo, New York. They had the storm of the century. Basically, over 7ft of snow fell in less than 24 hours. They couldn’t clear it fast enough.

 

People died like 40-something people died because of snow-related incidents. Whether they started a fire because there was no power in the city. So, my daughter was five days without power over Christmas.

 

They were sending out stories about how you can treat a dead body in your house. So let’s say that you have in your home, somebody slips and falls, or an elderly person dies. What can you do with the body for days? Because it will take time before ambulances and coroners and everybody can get there because the streets are unpassable. People died in their cars.

 

Underrepresented people died at a higher rate than white people. To be honest.

 

And I did not know this, but gentrification of certain areas also means I. Those areas get plowed first. Those areas have wider streets. Those areas have access to emergency medical services faster because of those things. And so more. It was disproportionate, the access to help and aid that black and indigenous people here, black and people of color in Buffalo, had to that. And I wasn’t aware that there were even political, you know, parts of plowing streets for snow at that time. If you take that and apply it to the cyber field as well, we can see how that could also be true. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word gentrification on the Internet before, but it certainly applies. There are certain things that people have access to more things, and it often comes down to a lack of resources because of a lack of pay, which leads to a lack of financial resources, which means that you are not able to protect yourself as well. And to me, that. I mean, I’m on my soapbox already. I’m just. It pisses me off. I’m not gonna. I can’t even say that any less aggressively. It really just pisses me off that people die, and people’s lives are so impacted because at the base root of things, there is such an inequality between the haves and the have-nots, and that the have-nots traditionally are people with less.

 

Who has less access to resources because of the way that at least I can speak to the United States? Of course, the way that.

 

Since the Civil War and the freeing of slaves, since the way that those families have been able to navigate. It’s less than 150 years since all of that happened. That’s not a lot of time for an entire group of people to be able to have access to the same resources. If we’re nothing willing to give access to the same resources, and because we still have racism and because we still have ageism and sexism and all of the bad isms that there are out there, it will continue to be that way until we’re able to level the playing field. And it’s just.

 

It just makes me so bad.

 

[00:11:06] Speaker B: I understand you fully. Cause I believe some people don’t see it that way or because they don’t experience it, but also, at the same time, it’s so I’m looking at it, and we’re totally shocked that cybersecurity really can mirror gender and social inequalities because as I said earlier, the people who working inside, as we say in tech, most of it, it’s not fully diverse. We need a lot of diversity in tech if we’re talking about people of color, women from all underrepresented groups, and groups we need. But those people who work in cybersecurity may intentionally carry their own bias into policies and tools that will not address me, you, or a lot of people around because simply they’re not their own themselves diverse, but also that reflects a lot of inequality with agenda, with a lot of things. And it’s also pissed me off because. Because I don’t feel it. It’s fair. Life for them, it’s not fair. And now also online, they’re getting more attacked and abused online more than any other place. And also, I was shocked that gender-inclusive technology can reduce qualities. And I was reading about it, and that’s something that we can maybe focus on, how to be more inclusive and it can reduce the cyber attack on minorities. Yeah.

 

[00:12:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So David Ruiz is an online privacy advocate at malwarebytes. Oh, by the way, the Pew Pew Center reports, which are highly regarded, also report that significantly larger numbers of women and black and Hispanic Americans have reported online harassment compared to white men. But David Ruiz says this survey, for me at least, really showed that the Internet is not an equal experience for everyone. And people are telling us that loud and clear. There are groups who feel less private. There are groups who feel less safe. That just breaks my heart. I mean, but it’s personal experiences. And like you and I are constantly saying on the show, when people tell you something about their experiences, believe them because there are so few people who will tell you that they’ve been attacked; if they haven’t been attacked, who are willing to say, I’ve lost money because I fell victim to a scam, or I had to untangle privacy issues because my social identity was Social Security here in the United States, I’m not sure what it’s called elsewhere, but it was stolen. And we just had a huge breach in the United States, where all of our Social Security numbers and identities were breached. And so there’s an entire possibility that anybody here living in the United States, you need to tighten down your access, people’s access to you, and make sure that your credit reports and things like that, you’re monitoring those very closely, because anybody with access to your information, including a Social Security number, date of birth, could apply for a credit card in your name, and then leave you with all that debt at some point because of the way that this works and because underrepresented people typically have less access to the finances to be able to do those things.

 

We, people of color and women and handicapped and disabled people, often are the victims of that. So, hypervigilance is expensive in a lot of ways, but it’s also one of those expenses that you have to find a way to accommodate. Whether it’s your hypervigilance or being able to pay for additional security for your own Social Security number and things like that. I’m not sure exactly that there’s one right answer, but it’s certainly leveling the playing field. And just like, yeah, it’s. I don’t know. All right, over to you because I’m just losing my speaking ability.

 

[00:15:14] Speaker B: Remember we talked about the digital gap a while ago? And that is you can see the difference because of the numbers; I’m still shocked by them because I was reading this afternoon, a couple of hours before. Now it is. How can I say? It reflects that instead of us moving, or how can I say? Because online, where everyone feels safe from the corner of your home, you can do a lot of things, whatever you can join. It will be safer than the real world. If you’re, let’s be honest if you have a specific color pigmentation, your skin or you’re walking, you will feel safer at home. But no, it’s still the same. It’s like if you’re home, you’re being attacked, you’re being. Your identity is stolen, and you are sacred. Funny thing in our culture, uh, when I’m talking about the Middle East, there were people, they never attack men, which is crazy, which I hated. What happened is that when I was 18 years ago, 40 years ago, I was joking. 18 years ago, um, the Facebook, you know, some people were taking your photo, and then they created the account, and then they start saying, like, contact me or they offer sexual service, whatever. In my culture, that is a really big shame. If someone has that, it’s the family, it’s your dignity, your work on fire you, nobody wants to. It’s a really big shame on your family. And some people are scared. So people, what they do, take photos and, and they make a private account and then send for to that person. If you don’t give me money, if you don’t give me things, I will use you. It’s all of the time went to women. It’s never someone, most of the time, attacks me. Like, I’m gonna put your photo. And that sometimes really scares me. Now, with the AI thing and a lot of tools to create videos, I was also reading about a lot of things today. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it right. It’s like they made photos for you, and then they abused you sexually. Or, as they say, we’re gonna post it online. If you don’t do this, are we gonna send a share to your husband that you sent me this photo, or if you don’t send me money? And I found it crazy. And again, most of it happened to people of color, indigenous and women. So I hope I don’t know the people who are responsible for cybersecurity, the policies and rules they are gonna focus on. They focused more on why those groups were being attacked. As I said earlier, there was a nice solution: gender inclusiveness. So that will give a list of figures for identity online. And people cannot find out who you are.

 

[00:18:02] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s another. I’m trying to find out where it said it. I’ve lost track of where I’m in the article. But I will say that also because it’s embarrassing to report crimes against yourself. So, for example, we know that more women have been raped than we know of because women don’t want to report that they’ve been a victims of that kind of crime. Because there’s a stigma, especially in different cultures, right? So more so in some cultures than others of having been attacked, that it lowers your value as a woman. So, fewer people and fewer women will actually report when they’ve been sexually assaulted. The same is true for cybercrime. People are embarrassed that it happened to them, and they are less likely to report it. So the numbers that we’re sharing today are probably higher in reality because people are unwilling to say, yes, I fell victim to that crime because of the embarrassment that goes with saying I was, but. But if somebody breaks into your home, we don’t, you know, we’re not likely to say, oh my gosh, I’m not going to call the police because, you know, somebody busted into my bank vault or whatever it was. But when it’s our things, it’s somehow. And when it’s online, it somehow feels more embarrassing. And I’d like to remove that stigma altogether because these kinds of crimes need to be reported so that we can do more to stop and shut down. And I know that as soon as we solve one way, and we know this with WordPress, right, you build a plugin, there’s a vulnerability. We patched and updated the plugin. There’s another vulnerability, so we patched the plugin. It’s not like we built it once, and it’s done right. So, like, there’s always, we always have to be vigilant about new ways that people can get in and attack us. You know, we have. In the old days, all we had was a little latch on our door to lock. Well, people with big boots can bust right through that latch. We have, like, better, we have deadbolts. And, like, in a hotel room, I have an extra lock that I bring, and even with a key, you cannot get into my hotel room until I remove that lock because I’m concerned about my safety. So, we have to be able to think ahead in some ways to protect ourselves. And just, I think, I don’t know what the solution is, but I think raising awareness, we don’t always have the answers, right, you and I, but we can at least raise awareness and make people help to think about it. Also, if it’s happened to you and you didn’t want to report it, there’s at least a feeling of not being safe in numbers in this respect. But I feel better that I’m not the only fallen victim. For example, misery loves company. Or to know that you’re not the only person that’s been, you know, included in a group like that just. It just feels like, well, at least, it wasn’t just me. I guess I’m not saying it very eloquently, but I think you understand what I’m trying to say.

 

[00:21:10] Speaker B: Yeah. But also, the thing is, now I remember the story. I forget it.

 

When I moved to live in Europe, I was. I went with my husband to brag. I invited him for a long week on our anniversary. What happened is that I used my credit card because I didn’t want to use my normal bag. And then what happened is maybe my stupidity or whatever I want to. I gave it to the guy, and he said the machine was too short. And I tag it. And my husband also used his card in the shop. But when I returned home, I found that 1700 euros had been deducted from my credit card. Oh, no, I’m really happy. I called the bank. I didn’t do it. I didn’t approve of this, and it’s ridiculous. But the question was the guy was asking me, I tolerance it because I’m not gonna pay 1700. Believe me, if it was 504 hundred, yes. In two months, I may be upset about it, and I will cut down as much as I can on my expenses to manage it, but I would also like to do it immediately. And I know sometimes when you speak on the phone if you say whatever, your name is Anneliese Van Hastel, and hi, my name is Samahna sir. And then that’s a trigger. Are you sure? And he was asking me maybe you give it to someone maybe we did it at the end fine they gave me the money back, which I was really happy about. After a couple of months, as happened with my husband, someone took 400 or 300 dollars and something from the user’s credit card. He called them his name, my husband, and in less than 10 seconds, he closed the phone. He told me that you could just. They sent me the money back, and they gave me a new credit card, and I was pissed off. I had to go through the whole investigation and you because of your name, and that’s it, it’s happened. And sometimes, I don’t know, maybe if a different person, you’ll be ashamed because you will be scared, like are they gonna question me? Also, there are a lot of factors you are foreign or have a different name coming from a different culture time if you don’t have a nationality, some people are scared because if it’s the guy on the phone if he says no, you’re lying, then they will give you a fine and that fine can jeopardize your residency at the country. So, it is a crazy combination, but I no longer use my credit card. I just saved the house. Doesn’t come out. I always have cash, and that’s how I travel. But yeah, it’s just so crazy. He said his name; he’s a man; he gets it in 10 seconds and, honestly, canceled. They asked him did you do it? He said no, I did not. And they said okay we’re gonna cancel your current credit card and send you a new one. I may have to go through an investigation, and the guy literally threatened me at the end. If they find out I made the reservation, I could go to jail. And they told him the phone, no I didn’t do it to check. Like it’s so crazy, and so yeah.

 

[00:24:21] Speaker A: And yet, if your husband had called on your behalf, they probably would have said, “Oh yeah, okay, no problem.”

 

[00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah, no, but I think when they ask my social number whenever they look at my name, that’s weird, you know, it’s happened, but it’s sometimes, I don’t know, I’d say it’s happened a lot, but as you say. Yeah, not everyone reports it. Definitely, and not everyone says it. So the numbers will be much higher in reality, let’s say, if people reported it.

 

[00:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah. If you’re out there and listening this far, please protect yourself. Find ways to, at the very least, make sure you’re monitoring your accounts so that you can catch things as they come through. Make sure you’re monitoring your websites oftentimes. So one of my favorites, the lessons I learned, is that I should say favorites, the wrong word. But to tell the story, back in my freelancing days, I hosted many of my customers, and I had them all in the same hosting account. I was partitioning it off, and one of those accounts got hacked. And so they all got hacked because they were all in the same hosting space. I mean, I’ve learned since then, and then we’re talking, it was well over ten years ago, maybe twelve years ago, something like that. Very early on, I’ve learned I’m not doing this anymore, just to put it out there.

 

I spent the entire night in Montreal. I was speaking the next day at Wordcamp Montreal. I get these notifications as I drive 7 hours up there for 6 hours, whatever it was. So I spent the entire night taking out lines of code because I also didn’t have the more recent backups. I had backups from when I built the sites but hadn’t backed them up, so I wasn’t protecting them that way. There were no automotive backups like there are today, which is how we deal with hosting today.

 

And so I cleaned up all the lines of code. The hosting company said, congratulations, we’re turning everything back on; it’s all set. And the next day, it was all done again. And it’s because I did not realize the one thing I didn’t check, and nobody had ever told me to check, was that they probably also created new users with admin privileges on each site. And they had; I didn’t know that that was a thing. And so I had cleaned up the mess but still had the uninvited guests in the house, right? So, like, I had to do it all again. So all of that to say, you can think you’re being hyper-vigilant, but please do your due diligence because oftentimes there are things that you overlook like you’ve locked down the front of the house, but the back doors are still open, you know, and there’s ways that people can get in if you’re not being careful. So, do your research. Make sure you spend wisely on tools that will help you stay safe.

 

That’s all I got.

 

[00:27:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And share your experience. I know it’s difficult. Maybe you are in a position where you feel shame or don’t want to share it, but when you share your story, you can protect others because people will learn from you. And all the time, those hackers or whatever, when you share the way they do it, of course, every time they come up with something, but at least sharing the knowledge, this happened to me. Be careful of this and this. And you can protect other people. Yeah, absolutely.

 

[00:27:49] Speaker A: Being vulnerable in how you can share your story. Don’t be vulnerable on your website.

 

Don’t leave. Your vulnerability is an interesting word in our culture, especially in our Internet culture. Opening yourself up to sharing your experiences can often help other people learn from them. So be that kind of vulnerable, not the other kind.

 

[00:28:20] Speaker B: I love that.

 

[00:28:24] Speaker A: Oh, that’s awesome. I’m trying to see. I don’t remember. Do we have a guest next week? No, we don’t have a guest next week, so I’m unsure what we will discuss. If you have ideas for us, things that you think otherwise, we keep watching the news but keep thinking of things. And we’ll be back next week with more topics about underrepresented folks. Yeah, so if you have stories, let us know. We have some guests coming up that I’m excited about. So anyway, thank you, Samah.

 

[00:28:53] Speaker B: Thank you, Michelle, and everyone listening.

 

[00:28:57] Speaker A: Absolutely. We’ll see you all next week and underrepresented in tech. Bye.

 

If you’re interested in using our database, joining us as a guest for an episode, or just want to say hi, go to underrepresentedintech.com. See you next week.