69: Resurrection with Eran Sinai

Chris: Eran Sinai is the CEO of ID Seal, an organization that provides proven identity, theft protection, data privacy, and cyber security solutions. Iran prides himself on being one of America’s forerunners in consumer advocacy and protection for more than 25 years. He has dedicated his life to safeguarding people and their reputations while actively working to raise public awareness about identity theft, and privacy scams.

Chris: Eran, thanks for joining me today.

Eran: Thanks you for having me. Happy to be here.

Chris: Oh man. I’m looking forward to this conversation. And I’d like to start things off by just talking to you a little bit about your background and your experience. You actually played professional soccer at one point, is that correct?

Eran: Yes, I did when I was young and. I did . No, I’m only beautiful. But yeah, I did play soccer growing up in Israel. Played all through, played through college on scholarship here in the us and yeah, it’s one of those things that you grow up with and you never let go. Even at this age.

Eran: Unfortunately, it comes with a lot of injuries when you get older, but, you know. I love the sport.

Chris: Was that ever a focal point for you to extend your career in soccer? Or, I guess when did that transition sort of occur for you when you, when you decided to go more towards the security side?

Eran: Well, I guess growing up in Israel, played playing soccer and then after the military and going through what I went through Coming to the states, being on soccer scholarship and continuing from there. It came to a point that I started school here, college in the US when I was older. Older than any other person.

Eran: Cause I started here when I was 24, right? Cause in Israel, go to the military and what I’ve been through it delayed. Coming back to the states or coming back to soccer rather. And when I eventually got to the States during my undergrad when I was 24, I was on soccer scholarship in New York. And the funny thing is when I used to go on the field as a 24 years old, playing with freshman Players used to come to me and say, “Coach, are you playing?”

Eran: I was like, “Coach? I’m 24 years old. I’m a freshman here. What are you talking about?” So being that and being that I graduated when I was 28 and then continued my schooling when I went pro it was, I was. Older in age and back at the time, you know, you had to have a job to play soccer. It didn’t cover, Especially cause maybe I wasn’t in such a high level that made enough money.

Eran: But Nonetheless, especially here. Right? Yeah, exactly. I’m sure there was a difference. Exactly. And, and nonetheless the experience was incredible. And I started getting injuries. I’ve had injuries before that during the military time and. Continuing to play soccer. It got more and more intense and I realized that What the body goes through is just a lot.

Eran: And as much as I love the sport, I figured that I’m gonna need to do something else. And I had other passions as well. I was very kind of diverse in what I was doing and continue my schooling, eventually going to PhD. But nonetheless, that’s when I kind of figured that I need some direction in life. And the sucker was for fun.

Eran: It wasn’t a focal point of my life. But it was definitely something I don’t regret.

Chris: And what was your focus on while you were in school here?

Eran: I started little or not, I started in accounting and I really don’t like accounting, but I started with accounting and I heard growing up, I always told my dad, I wanna be a CPA.

Eran: He said, “you are a salesman. What are you talking about?” And I said, They had that, What do you know? So I did accounting. Really didn’t like it then went to , master’s in accounting. Really didn’t like that either with international law and then continued to on PhD with law, but I never really practiced.

Eran: I’m not a licensed attorney. So I must say that cause saying you’re a licensed attorney, you said you know, that could be serious. So I’m not a licensed attorney. And I don’t practice cause I’m not an attorney. But back at the time when I came to the States, I was working for the Government of Israel Ministry of Defense working with the American government and.

Chris: We must say when you came to the US cause that made significant,

Eran: very much so. It became very significant for you guys because I came here to the us landed in New York on July 4th, 1988 at 6:00 AM and it became a national holiday as we’ve discussed before. Right? Yes. Thank you for that. Of course, . So, so yeah, so I.

Eran: After working for the government, I did do a little bit turn because I did, believe it or not, after that, ended up working in the garment industries. I was working for a company called Tahari. It’s a women’s designer. Very big company. I was VP production operations and very big company. And the owner was Israeli and we of course met where else, but on the soccer field.

Eran: And he was playing for fun. I was playing for fun indoor, and then he asked me if I wanna come to work there. Cause he like how I played soccer, I guess. And,

Chris: and this was still in while you were living in New York.

Eran: That’s why I was living in New York, just about to finish my contract with the government

Eran: So he came to the office, said, Do you wanna come work for me? I said, Sure. I gave me the number of the CEO. It was probably $500 million company or whatever it was. Went to the CEO. He said, So you play soccer with Ellie? I said, Yes. And he said, Well, how much do you wanna make? And when do you wanna. Nice.

Eran: Well, I did take it. I was still working. I had one more. I told him, Look, I have one more semester to graduate. And I was on the government visa at the time, you know, diplomatic visa. And I said let me graduate first and then I’ll come back anyway from here to there. Ended up working there for a few years experiencing, tried one more time after I left the hurry to comedy called Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans.

Eran: I was their VP of operations and production and I realized the garment is not for me. And that’s when I went back and fast forward, here we are 20 years later, I’m still in the cyber arena.

Chris: Very nice. So there was a transition there. When you left New York Yes. And you moved to San Diego, correct? Yes.

Chris: What triggered that move at that

Eran: time? first of all, living in Manhattan for 18 years. Takes a toll on you. I’m a hot weather kind of a guy, right? Give me the heat, give me sweat. I’d rather do that than being cold. And in New York it was kind of every year it was like, okay, this is the last winter.

Eran: This is the last winter, right. Then eventually, I never The last one that, Yeah, exactly. Until one time it was removed in oh six and Went there to explore again, opportunities with, again, the arena, the cyber security arena. Okay. And that started and then back in oh eight I had a kidney transplant and when the kidney transplant in February of 2008.

Eran: And my wife, my ex-wife, my wife at the time, Which, which we still talk and, you know, everything is great was my donor. And what happened is a year later we went to try buy her a car. And when I remember sitting at the dealership, and I remember the lady Lindsey from the dealership who I knew there saying by the run, I, I can’t pull Maria’s credit.

Eran: And I said, Why not? And said, Well, according to the bureaus, she’s. And I remember we were looking at each other. I was like, What are you talking about? And apparently someone possibly stole her medical information, used it to get prescription drugs, to get treatments, whatever they did at the time.

Eran: And basically, once I started getting the copays, they wrote on the bills assist and send it. Mm. So we literally have had to go to social security with proof and got a note at the time that it’s called Alive and Well. Right? That, that you can’t even get today. Because today there are so many imposters trying to still assist people identity, believe it or not, so that when you go there they say, Well, they, they’ll say, Chris, how would I know that you are the real Chris and not someone who’s trying to be Chris, who’s really not Chris?

Eran: So from here to there we, you know, we are able to bring her back to life, clear her credit, and bring her no to back to life. But that was the pivotal point, I think in my life. And after a while, I swore that if I could do something to help people not go through what we went. That’d be my gift, right?

Eran: That I can live behind me. And lucky her, well lucky me first, right? That she was there for me, but lucky her that I knew what I was doing. Cause I was familiar with the field. And even though it still took months and, and headaches and, you know, sleepless night thinking what’s happening here? So that’s when I first dabble in the, really going towards helping people protect.

Eran: Recover their identity when things

Chris: happen. Yeah. And it’s, it’s fantastic what you’re doing. I do wanna mention that you once had a show on ESPN Radio. Mm-hmm. . And on that program you spoke with SMBs, you spoke with small business owners. Did that in some way, you know, help you gain a perspective on identity fraud and the potential risks involved from the business side.

Eran: I think being in the arena of identity theft and how it affects your life and when it happens to you, obviously and happened to me, obviously it was an eye-opener. Mm-hmm. , but now you’re not only talk in the talk, but you walk in the walk, right? Yes. And probably one of the only CEOs of the runs, companies that actually know how to take a case from eight to Z and literally resolve it, right?

Eran: Resolve the whole case. And, and knowing that If you are client of mine or subscriber of ours I can tell my people what to do. And I remember when we set up all the call center, I used to walk around and train people and listen to what they say and how they say and be a part of the conversation.

Eran: But then throughout talking having the radio show started on KCBQ and then ended up on ESPN radio in San Diego. It was a really. And experience and an opportunity more to reach out to what we used to call the small business owner’s corner. Right? And my show was really bringing guests from the community, whether it’s realtor, financial people, or we had the district attorney of San Diego.

Eran: Come often to talk to us about certain things like cyber bullying and other things that are happening or, or even trading with you know people are being women are being kidnapped in San Diego and brought over the border, you know, all kinds of. Crazy topics. And the CISO, the Chief Information Security Officer of the City of San Diego would come off the show, and I’ll give you an example.

Eran: He would say, Well, you know, we get in the morning and we get the, what’s called the Palo Alto Report. And we’ll see about 60,000 attempts at night to hack into the systems. People hacking to polices, police cars, computers, for example. Mm-hmm. , because he said when they drive behind you’re trying to get your information, then they can’t cause the computers are too slow.

Eran: Or he gave me, he said, You know a funny thing he said in San Diego we change all the meters. You know when your car parking meters from coins to credit cards and we thought it’s gonna save labor and it’s gonna be such a great thing ended up that’s causing us. Because now we have to protect the data of all those credit cards and the labor for that is much more expensive than those guys that walk your mom with those cards that they pull for the quarters they pull.

Eran: Right? So it gave me an opportunity to really look into the community and see what people need and to hear real stories, real nightmares, and. So what pushed the topic even more

Chris: so when the event happened then with you and your ex-wife at the car dealership? You were more cognizant at that time of what was actually occurring?

Eran: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Because now you’re not, you know, I’m not just sitting and talking to you about, you know, that could happen to you. I’ve heard of medical identities, theft, and it’s horrible. No, I can tell you how it’s, what’s horrible about it. I’ve been there. Done. So that gives you a real perspective.

Eran: it’s always that you experience something, unfortunately you learn from it and you can speak on it firsthand, right? Yeah,

Chris: yeah, for sure. So with that experience and with your situation specifically talk me through that. How long did it take you from when you determined your ex-wife was a victim of identity theft?

Chris: To the point that the ID restoration process completed,

Eran: I think it took over six. The good thing, I mean, there’s nothing good about it, but the good thing that was done there was a medical identity theft compared when someone steals you. Social security. Even though they had it. But back at the time, remember it wasn’t like today.

Eran: Yes, there was an identity theft, but the awareness to it was not as great as it is today. And it was still kind of the beginning of the big thing which the. The trend that we are seeing today, I mean, talking about 50 billion lost from cybercrimes and stuff in last year, right? So, so when you, when you’re looking at that for example, I just interviewed we talked about briefly before someone I know who had some coverage, obviously wasn’t good enough.

Eran: It’s, it happened six months ago. He’s still going through nightmare. It turned up to even threats again on text because he found who the thieves were trying to connect and he was really powerless of what he can do. And those guys left town and there’s nothing can be done to arrest them. And who knows if they’re gonna do it to other people.

Eran: But the worst thing, and the reason I’m getting to it, is that they have his social and the whole purpose was getting his social. Even though they’re not that sophisticated, they know enough to harm. And you were talking about drug users and people that are real criminals doing that stuff. And when someone has your social, what stops them for coming back in six months or a year or two years down the road and wake up against like, Ooh, let me try X as social.

Eran: Maybe I can get something going now. Maybe he’s little bit complacent now and he is not paying a. And that’s what I’m trying to educate what happened to us. Yes. It was horrible. Lucky asked that the thief was not that sophisticated, but they stole it. The medical identity used it for drugs and whatever, and they were gone.

Eran: Had people realize that once your social security’s out there, that’s where the problems begin. And people say, I’m not worried about it cause I have bad credit. It’s not about your credit. I mean, imagine, here’s a scenario that I’m like, Oh my God, I’m so lucky. Right? Imagine they still, your medical identity, they use it and now they change your blood type because they change your medication or your allergies are not.

Eran: And now let’s say my ex-wife had to give me the kidney and it happened before now, Well, you’re not a blood match. Or, or what if there are allergies or what If you need to get treatment and they give you the wrong thing because of fortune, your records. That’s, That’s really scary. Just as scary. Even more so maybe cause it’s life threatening here when someone’s still your social, but they can really ruin your life.

Eran: And that’s why, you know, when I start talking about it, I kind of like, Oh, let me get off my jacket because I’m starting to sweat just talking about it. Cuz I get so passionate, you know.

Chris: Yeah. And you know what else is scary is that in addition to the identity resurrection process that you live through mm-hmm.

Chris: You can never be assured that the damage is 100% reverse. Right? You never know what data was compromised, how it was used, where it was used, and today you have the dark web, right? Where people don’t That’s right. Typically have knowledge of, or visibility. Or know they even need visibility into, So it gets scarier by the day, man.

Chris: Yeah,

Eran: yeah, it is. And you know what’s a crazy thing? You, if you go on the dark web, you can buy stolen credit cards. And the only, I’m saying it’s only credit cards. I mean, you can buy more than that, but you can buy stolen credit cards with a guarantee. That if they don’t work, you get your money back. Wow.

Eran: Can you believe that? And I mean, you can get packages and believe it or not last from a recent research that we’ve done and data we received, medical information sells more times and it’s more expensive than financial. We’ve just launched something relatively new, added that to our kind of features, medical identity monitoring.

Eran: Right? So basically it works just like monitoring your credit whenever, if you enter your medical ID cards or all the numbers on them, on the cards that you have, anytime you use your medical your insurance card, you get an alert just like credit, right? So you know. If it’s not you know what, what’s going on here?

Eran: Someone’s using my card. Right, right. Which, which is incredible. Which is incredible. And, and, you know, stuff like that. Lucky me, I didn’t, we didn’t experience anyone stealing money from the bank account. Unlike my friend. That was, you know, you can find those interview on our YouTubes and stuff like that, but the guy had over $260,000 gone from his bank account in a second.

Eran: And he had loans and student loans and you’d think, how could people get student loans? Studio then didn’t get a student loan, right? Here’s a trick. You don’t have to attend classes. You get the student loan, you register to classes, you get the money. Then you never attend classes. And I don’t mean to teach you how to steal it, but , you know that.

Eran: That’s what’s insane about it. That’s where, you know, we are not, Of how much damage can be caused to us, can be caused to us with medical, with just regular fraud. And it’s not about, people say, Yeah, my bank will cover my credit card. It’s not about that. It’s about ruining your life. It’s about ruining your reputation.

Eran: It’s about what about your kids? What if someone, by the time they’re ready to college, you find out they have an all rap sheet with, with the repo car and credit cards and mm-hmm. and we see it all.

Chris: Yeah. And you can put a dollar amount on that pain. Right? Exactly. And then you have to worry about the reputational impact as well.

Chris: You have a certain profile online. Absolutely. For instance, if you, if you go to look for work and an HR company is performing recon on you and, you know, looks at this profile, Yeah. Believes that this fake profile

Eran: is you. That’s right. And, and that’s right. And you have all kinds of fake profiles.

Eran: It, it’s not, I’m not saying we can find out if you have a fake profile out there, but there’s so much that can be done, so much that can be prevented proactively and, and not proactively. So, you know, for me the identity theft was one thing. And, and I remember a few years ago we had it up and running and.

Eran: We had identities of programs and very happy with the features we had, and obviously we kept adding, like I said, the medical monitoring and the financial transaction monitoring, which kind of goes into it, connects to more than 15,000 institutions that you can monitor changes in your investment accounts, 401K account to even Venmo accounts and stuff like that.

Eran: You can monitor changes into those accounts so you are alerted. But I said to myself, and that was before Covid started, I said, I kind of vision that, I don’t know, maybe in my lifetime, maybe not. We’re gonna have those self-driving cars that you go, people are going to leave maybe outside the city, maybe not, but they’re gonna have.

Eran: Car that’s gonna drive itself. Maybe take them to the office, then the car is gonna go back home, take the wife with the kids to the store, whatever. And, and we’ll be working on our own computer. And I figured, I said to myself, you know, the B Y O D, not B y O b, that you can do before you met me.

Eran: But the B Y O D bring your own device phenomena. , it’s gonna get more and more out there. So people are gonna use their computers at home and, and use it and share computers. People were laughing at me when I said that, and that was probably in 2018. And little do you know, Covid hit, right? Mm-hmm.

Eran: and people started working from home. All of a sudden you leave your computer on. and you’re going for a break in the evening, your kids jump on your computer, all of a sudden you’re sharing your computer. All of a sudden there’s all these additional risks. Cause you’re no longer protected by your, let’s say network at the office that you have the protection, you’re on a home wifi.

Eran: There’s so many additional risks. So I said I need to do something. And that’s when I started back at the time to help you with your own privacy. Mm. And protect your own privacy on your own device. And when I started doing that, people say, Ha, whatever, whatever. And it, it, it’s, it’s a huge thing now.

Eran: We give it, it’s included with all our plans and what it does it’s called ID Seal Protect. Right? And no one else offers that. It has 14 features. Yes, you can find some of those features. With other companies, right? But you won’t find all 14 of them. And even if you have to go to few different companies, you can probably get close to half.

Eran: But for me it was important that when you leave your computer on or when you. Turn your computer, you put, and you work on your computer. You have a lot of documents out there. I wanted to know that those are protected. So I’m like, how am I gonna protect my documents so my kids don’t see that, or they don’t see my passwords or, or someone hacks my computer, I forget my laptop open or someone steals it.

Eran: What if they get my latest tax return? working for home. We doing all these things. While we are working, it’s all on the computer. Everything all our life is on is on our laptops, right? So, for example, I did something that’s, it’s a document scanner. So as soon as you install that, I to protect it scans all the documents on your computer.

Eran: And he said, Hey Chris, we found all, Here’s the list of all the sensitive documents that we think you have on your computer. You can add keywords, you can add search criteria, but then we recommend it. We will encrypt it for you and put it in a vault. The vault is not on the cloud. It’s hidden in the software.

Eran: So if someone hack your computer, stole it, jumped on it, whatever it is, they won’t be able to find it. You can work on it on this through the vault, or you can export it or you can delete it. There’s so many things. So that was important for me. It was important for me that you don’t have to sit with a sticky note on, on your camera when you’re home and you have to leave it or what if it falls, and to worry about that.

Eran: You. Have something that blocks your camera and no one can hack into it because it blocks the ports to the camera so you can speak at home when it blocks your microphone zone. You don’t get any popups with ads based on what you said, or no one can hack into a computer and why not give someone vpn?

Eran: We just came up with something that’s called VPN Plus, right? It’s launched November 1st because we feel, we call it, we have a campaign that’s called The Game has changed, right? Because not only because gamers use VPN and they need to use vpn, but we also wanna teach. Starting from the younger generation, you need to use a vpn, especially when you travel, you’re on the road.

Eran: It imagine working in a vpn, and you know what it is. I’m just saying that for people and sake of the listeners that imagine all your information is in a tunnel, right? It’s encrypted, it’s protected. No one can get into this tunnel and none of the information can get out of this. It protects the information.

Eran: So what if I give that to you? What give you antivirus? What give you, There are so many other features that what if you can Google work on the web and have no cookies or what if you can scramble all the finger prof, digital profiling? What if you can work on the convertor and have no ads popping up for you?

Eran: So all those features were keep talking, but I told you , don’t let me, don’t lemme talk man, because I’ll take over.

Chris: I like it man. And especially the ID Seal Protect feature is phenomenal. And for the average user, they would be shocked to see how much personal data is unprotected on their pc.

Chris: And, you know, once that information is made known to them, it just enforces awareness and enforces proper handling and storing of their data moving forward.

Eran: Yeah. That that’s right. And, and that’s the key look. I mean, if you go to doing something in your life, I bet that’s my belief, right? If you go to do something, focusing the results, it’s gonna be limited.

Eran: Right? When I, when I remember started, Id c. Stuff like that. When I do something, I don’t think focus on the results. The results are things that I can measure at the end of the process, whether they happen or not, right? Yeah. Results could be a yes or no answer, right? Did I make money? Did people use it? Do people enjoy it?

Eran: Is it easy to use? All those is yes and no, right? But the context of the way I’m looking at is why am I even doing that? And I’m, I’m doing that because, you know, because I feel that it. Creates a happier world. It’s much bigger than me. It’s much bigger than you and, and the company. It really just creates an amazing environment.

Eran: And if people can get that then now we’re talking. Yeah. Now we are making a dent in the world, you know?

Chris: Now talk to me a little bit about, Who you partner with to make this happen? Do you have exclusive contracts with a certain bureau that you work with? Or how does that typically work when you’re looking at an individual and you’re sort of building that profile for them?

Eran: So at IDSeal, we are powered by Experian. As you know that three credit bureaus, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax, right? And I’ve always had, for many years I’ve had relationship with Experian to a point that we created the ID seal powered by Experian the data. So, so when we get a data, when we protect your identity, we can access it, right?

Eran: It’s provided by Experian to. So I don’t look at what they give you. I don’t look at your credit, for example, but we work with Experian to provide the data so we know what to protect, And but you know, the funny thing is that as much as I work with Experian and we have a, you know, we work in 14 countries in Europe and we work in Canada with different products, but I, I’m one of those that, because I’m so, how to say impartial though?

Eran: One or the other, because I think I’m the only one that I actually have relationship with all three viewers. I don’t think anyone else has the same relationship that can say, Well, I work with Experian, but I can’t talk to anyone else. I talk to all of them. I, I get what we need. I communicate working on different things and I think when, again, when you focus on something, Not just one thing, it, it changes how you work and what the collaboration you get from different companies in different parts of the world.

Eran: Yeah.

Chris: No, that’s interesting. Let me ask you this. Once someone registers and has an ID SEAL account, right? Talk me through the components that. are included for that user. Is it? Is it possible to list out what protection ID seal is providing that user?

Eran: Okay, so when you sign up, obviously you sign up with your email.

Eran: So there is a process, and I’ll get back to the sign up. There’s a process that calls authentication, right? Authentication. Now those security questions that are generated directly, From the bureaus, right? So you get a question that said, Hey Chris, between the years of 2018 and 2021, you had the car list, what was your payment?

Eran: A, B, C or D, right? Mm-hmm. . Those are security questions that you’re being asked by the bureaus to confirm your identity, to confirm that it’s you. Those are questions that sometimes could be annoying cause it’s, Oh my God, I don’t remember that. Then you have another choice. So you have a few questions that questions that are asked to authenticate your identity.

Eran: As soon as you do that, that’s when you can start getting credit alerts. However, the law says that as soon as you sign with your email, right, as far as we are concerned, as far as the insurance companies are concerned, you are protected. So even you didn’t authenticate. Your account. You are, you are still, you are already protected, right?

Eran: Because we’ve yeah, you’ve provided your email account and you are already, your email is already monitored on the dark web. So if your email is being sold on the dark web, we’ll give you an alert right now. We encourage people and we know that 99% of the people do authenticate cause they wanna get credit alert and they want to get all the other information.

Eran: So you signed up, you create your own password, right? Then you authenticate your account, you continue with authenticating your account, and then you go in to fill in. All the information. Now you need to remember, and everyone needs to remember that we can’t monitor what you don’t tell, what you don’t provide us access to, right?

Eran: So if you want me to monitor your 401ks and IRAs, you better put the account numbers in so I can watch, I can monitor them. You want me to monitor you. Passport that’s not being sold on your dark web or you want me to monitor obviously I have your address, so you’ll get alert if there sex offenders are moving into your neighborhood.

Eran: But, and also you get alerts if someone’s trying to change your address in the post office. But if you want me to monitor your Facebook account, or, or Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts, you are gonna have to connect me to them so I can monitor them. You have to authenticate so I can send you.

Eran: Immediate credit alert if there’s something happened on your credit.

Chris: And when you say social media monitoring, what does that consist of?

Eran: Monitoring reputation. We have the technology and you know, it’s like, go, I’m going off subject for a second. I can even create, you know, to scan images.

Eran: If you, someone posts your image on the web, I can’t do that because in order to do that, I gotta get permissions, for example, from Facebook and Twitter and, and well, those, all those apps for dating apps. Mm-hmm. , Tinder, and all those. So if someone set up a fake profile, I can get that, but the companies won’t let me access.

Eran: I need collaboration to make things happen. It’s not a one side thing. I’m not hacking into anything. I need collaboration if I want. You want me to protect your information. Allow me to monitor it. Same thing. If I wanna protect more than that, I need collaboration from the social media accounts. So social media companies, they won’t do that.

Eran: So what I can do is monitor, for example, if there’s any bad words used there, or when we do children’s social media monitoring, if there’s cyber bullying, right? The parent would. Interesting. And we found out that 90% of the kids are going through any cyber bullying will not confront their parents about that.

Eran: So you as a parent would be able to know that. So that’s, that’s what I’m talking about, social media monitoring.

Chris: And I noticed that you provide detection of oversharing of information as well. And I mean the correlation that an attacker could do just from the data. That a user post or a picture that they post of themselves when they’re on vacation that threat is real and it’s dangerous to post information haphazardly like that.

Eran: Yeah, I mean, I, we can do it, but again, I won’t be able to do it if, if this social media platform give me access to that. So, and here’s the thing. You have a great point, right? Because here’s what people do. You go to a vacation, With your spouse and your in-laws and your dog for your birthday, right?

Eran: So now you’re posting where you are, any geographical location of where you are, what? So that’s security. What’s your favorite vacation? What’s the name of your dog and what’s your wife’s maiden name? Right? Now you can see that because you tagged the entire family in there with your dog Schnoozer, or whatever.

Eran: whatever. So, so basically your guard dog’s not home, . Yeah, exactly. So now I know all I know a lot of the things. Mm-hmm. , you know, so. That’s, that’s, that’s kind of something we try to educate people. I know people feel the need to share a lot, but just think about it a little bit. I mean, how many times we see people post on Facebook and say, Hey, if you got a friend request from you or whatever, it wasn’t me.

Eran: How do you think that happened? Yeah, yeah. I see that far too often.

Chris: Exactly. So yeah, and if you’re a target. That’s lightwork, right? That’s easy for someone to correlate that information or you may not be a target until you post that information.

Eran: That’s right. And you know, I always say to people, Look, can you prevent that?

Eran: Any theft? Nah. No, absolutely. Look, NASA’s been hacked. There’s so many things been hacked today, so can I guarantee you? No, I can’t guarantee you. You do have the insurance, but also look, if I’m trying to get into your house. And you have an alarm system and your doors are locked properly, I might not waste my time and go to the next victim.

Eran: Might be a little easier. It works the same with it than he said, Man, it works the same way. You just have to be a little bit more, take an extra step. Do. Two step authentication on everything you have. Come on, don’t be lazy. I’m not saying you are. I’m just saying in general, I see people and I said, Do you have two step authentications?

Eran: Like, No, what’s that? So I’m like, No, it’s a pain. I, Come on. What’s, What’s a pain? A pain that your information is stole on. And a pain to take another five seconds to get a text onto your phone.

Chris: Yeah. And in our field we almost assume they have it, but there’s so many times where you’re talking to folks outside of security or not in that security lane that don’t use it.

Chris: It’s an inconvenience.

Eran: Yeah. And I talk to people the trouble all the time and they’re like, Ah, no. If your paint is a painting, you know what, man? I don’t want to use it. Mm-hmm. , it’s like, Come, I forget it. I was like, You’re serious. Yeah. what does it take until they get. . Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Eran: And then it’s a bit too late, you know, And, and it, and I think it’s about awareness and I’m, I’m, you know, happy to be here because hopefully the listeners can learn a lesson and can start looking a little bit back and say, Surely you have a vpn. Using a vpn, right. If you’re students or whatever, you know.

Eran: So it’s important. It really is important. Absolutely.

Chris: I am a user of Id sound. I just would like to talk through my personal experience a little bit and I don’t wanna hijack the episode here, but I think it’s important.

Eran: No, man, as long as you do a good job. Keep quick talking.

Chris: It’s all positive. It’s all positive.

Chris: No, I mean, we talked about the registration and set up, which was seamless in my case. the validation piece was straightforward. I was up and running probably within five minutes or. The UI to me was super intuitive. I think that is super important as well. I mean, even with me being on the security side, when I’m navigating a product that I’m using, you know, that’s important for me to be able to easily navigate through a system and find the information that I’m looking for and have it displayed, you know properly.

Chris: And, and I love that aspect of ID seal appreciate. the information that I saw was a result of incidents that I never even knew happened. So, you know, having that intel I think is extremely important. And if I were to have that visibility in real time when those events occurred, you know, I would’ve been, it would’ve been extremely valuable to me.

Chris: Yeah. And then lastly, I do wanna shout out Digital Spy, which is the dark web scanner. And yeah, it’s because, you know, not too many of us have. Intel and visibility into that platform. And you know, that’s where you have the dark web marketplaces and they’re just selling a wide array of personal data.

Chris: And I just thinking having that monitoring capability is just great.

Eran: Yeah. the dark web is a fascinating place. And. It’s kind of everyone’s selling everything from everyone else. Kind of imagine a farmer’s market you go to and you see all these cards, right? So imagine they’re all selling this stolen information, but then they’re steal from each other to sell it too.

Eran: Yeah, but it’s insane, man. It’s absolutely insane. And what you can find there and what people are selling it is, you know, their package deal. You can buy a package, deal of your driver license, email, and password, and, and let’s say your password. So they’re all kinds of package deals.

Eran: So it’s a thriving market and, you know, they, they’re, they’re rating systems to different companies that hack and steal. It was one said by director of the FBI said, there are two type of companies in the us one that got hacked and another that don’t know that got hacked. And, and I think it the first one who said that was someone else, but nonetheless, yeah, that’s, that is, that is the said reality.

Eran: So we can’t bury our head in the sand and we just gotta be proactive about. One proactive step to help ourselves not be in that situation.

Chris: So say someone gets alerted from id, their data has been identified in a dark web marketplace, does ID seal then provide guidance or suggestions for remediation to the user?

Eran: Right? So, so if, let’s divide it into two topics. If you, if your identity was stole, Obviously we will help you. We will not help you, but we’ll, we will take over and make sure that your identity is recovered, right? Whether it’s your social security with your credit is wrecked completely. Whether you know, like we’ve had a lot of false claims for unemployment insurance.

Eran: People find unemployment insurance. There are a lot of cases since covid of claims of fraudulent unemployment insurance. So we’ll help you and we’ll do the whole thing for you, right? There’s the insurance and, you know, up to a million dollar coverage with all its insurance. Disclaimers and all that that’s in there.

Eran: But you know, they’ll cover, they’ll help, they’ll, they’ll get you the attorneys you need and the whole it. Now, if your information is sold in the dark web, people say, Well, can you remove it? I mean, if I were, I could remove it. I probably wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. I’ll be too busy. But it’s impossible.

Eran: Once it’s out in the dark web, can’t do anything about it other than your word that is. And if it’s an email, so go change your email. If your passport is out there, maybe you gotta go change your passport. You know? So there are things, your driver license is out there are things you can do, right? So we’ll tell you what you can do, but unfortunately, you know, I, I can’t make a disappearing from the dark web.

Eran: So that’s the truth. If I’ll be saying anything else, I’ll be lying, you know? So, yeah.

Chris: I think that by providing that guidance to users that are impacted is important.

Eran: I agree. And you need a little hand holding and telling you what to do. We can do that. you can chat, you can call the office, the customer service, or you can chat and people will help you.

Eran: People say, Oh, sorry, I can’t help you with that. people understand, and it was important to me when to set it up in a way that people do take proactive approach, not only in, in you as a customer, but we as a customer service. Customer care center that we, we do give you a little bit more.

Eran: We, we, you feel that it’s not a machine answering, It’s not just text your information to the computer and tells me what to tell you. It doesn’t work like that. Yeah. We have trained people that we do concentrating. We have a person that’s only does training constantly to people and it’s constantly up to date on the market and what’s happening.

Eran: We send you alerts, for example, without breaches in. When we heard of Richards, maybe we don’t hear of them all, but whatever we hear, we send you an alert, we tell you, Hey Chris, this has just happened, but don’t worry, there’s nothing you can do about it, or there’s nothing you need to do about it, or Here’s what you need to do about it, and stuff like that.

Eran: So we try to be your eyes out there to make sure that you can do your podcast or you can do whatever you do in life and know at least I got that covered. I got someone at my back covering me, you know? Yeah. And, and that’s really the. I

Chris: do wanna shift topics just slightly and talk about a very cool hobby that you have that closely aligns to the concept of this program. So would you mind would you mind telling us all about that a little bit?

Eran: Sure. So add this hobby to my list. And I age cocktails in barrels for fun, and the funny thing is I gotta share that I’ve never been drunk. Nothing against it. It’s, it’s, it’s totally fine, you know, And I haven’t started drinking until my late, my mid to late thirties cause, you know, playing soccer all those years and it was not my thing.

Eran: So I enjoy crafting, making up my own cocktails, aging them. And I do drink socially. And I enjoy people coming over and. Tasting it. Tell me how they feel about it. So I really enjoy doing that. Consider me the neighborhoods mixologist, .

Chris: I could use you here man. I’m sure you’re busy enough, but you know, if you ever wanna come bartend here, I would love to have you.

Chris: So how did you get interested in that initially and how did you learn the process on how to do that?

Eran: I started drinking here and there and back in the World Cup of, what was that, 2014 World Cup. I remember I was sitting in San Diego, I went to this bar someone of buddy of mine and looking the Minneapolis, nothing that I really liked, right?

Eran: And I said, Hey, you. Do you mind making an experiment? He said no. I said, Look, I’ve come familiar with this thing that’s called Saint Germane. It’s, it’s, it’s an amazing, Everybody care. It’s a very incredible story behind it. But how about if we mix that. Because with Gene, I don’t like gin. I said, But let’s mix it together.

Eran: And then we started playing with it and we started give you a quick recipe. You get two to one, you know, you get the good gene. I, I like Nole gene. Not meaning to advertise it, but Nole is made by the same company. They’ve been distilling that in. Holland in the Netherlands for over, I think 250 years or maybe 300.

Eran: I don’t know. They’ll quote me on it, but, But it’s the same family that does Kettle One. They only do two drinks and no legend has very herbal, also floral smell to it. It’s very smooth. So I take. Two shots of, first of all, I mud, an orange and a lemon. I like it a little bit heavier in orange I mud that I put two shots of gin, one shot of St Germane.

Eran: It’s a great drink for the summer. That’s why I started doing that in the summer. You shake it real well and you strain it into a martini glass where you let some of the pop, you don’t double strand single strain. So some of the pub get through and it is so refreshing and we just experimented that and changed it a few times.

Eran: And I said, you. I like old fashions. Let me start doing old fashion with Maple. Let me age maple syrup in an old fashion, and then I’ll age that with the beers and then I’ll add some. Aldo cherries are the real thick cherries that are so delicious. Not like the red one. They’re black cherries and they’re fer it, it’s incredible.

Eran: And add that with some orange peel. And then I started cooking orange and sugar to make a spritzer. Over the glass, and then I started smoking anyway, so it became this thing that now when people come here, they sit and I do cocktails for everyone. It’s a lot of fun.

Chris: The excitement in your voice is almost matched man.

Eran: I don’t do anything halfway. When I do it, I do it all the way, man.

Chris: Out of all of your craft cocktails would you say that’s your favorite? The old fashioned?

Eran: Yeah. The old fashion or, Yeah, the old fashion is one of my favorites. I’m an old fashion and I started doing old fashions lately with.

Eran: Not whiskeys. Oh, interesting. Really delicious. I love to use the Kapa rum or even diplomatic, you know, decent rums. And you know what, it’s a little sweeter, a little smoother. Depends on your preference, man. When you come over, you’ll just let me know what you wanna try, you know.

Chris: Oh, I’m in . Booking my flight after this call.

Eran: Exactly.

Chris: Do you name the cocktails?

Eran: Not really, you know, people ask me, Why don’t you name it? So I, with that specific cocktail with the Gene and the St. Germane, I remember I told my buddy there at the bar, I said, he said, What do you wanna call it? He said, You know what, you can go to the owner and tell them that you came up with something and I don’t need credit for it.

Eran: Enjoy it. And he went and they gave it his name. So yeah, man,

Chris: you’re onto something man. You gotta start. Trademarking these

Eran: recipes. I dunno. Maybe I’ll do a TikTok thing. I’m not into that, but I don’t think I have the look for it. But I’ll do a TikTok thing and teach people

Chris: Oh man. Well, at Barcode man, I’ll I’m gonna carve out a special section of the drink menu you just for your drinks, man.

Eran: Appreciate it. my we’re not retiring a little bit. Hopefully, you know, I have a little place I’m gonna do in the, in the Caymans and gonna be a little bar and it’s gonna be open from four to seven.

Eran: It’s gonna be open now. It’s sitting there waiting, right? And you’re gonna come there and you’re gonna ask me for the menu. I said, No, man. There’s not menu. You’re gonna drink what I’m gonna give you. It’s gonna be something different every night. I give you a little, maybe I have a special way to make french fries that I like.

Eran: Incredible. Maybe do that with some homework that I make myself love to cook. And then at 7:00 PM you gotta get out because I wanna go have some fun. I’m not sitting there all night feeding. I love it, man. That’s it. Four to seven, man. That’s it. Close out.

Chris: And you’re based outta Charlotte, correct?

Eran: Yes, IDSeal is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Chris: In the Charlotte region. Where would you say is, A good bar to go to or a place to unwind after a long day?

Eran: Oh, well, depends on if you want quiet place or, or not quiet. I mean, look in Charlotte. In Charlotte for example there’s a really place called the seller. You, you come there and it’s on the front.

Eran: It’s a really sports bar, but you go down the stairs. It used to be, It’s an amazing story. It used to be in the back at the time when booze was illegal, you know, back in the depression time, it was a pharmacy at the top. And downstairs they have a speakeasy bar and that’s where all the who’s and who’s would come and drink.

Eran: And it’s all, it’s all bricked and everything. So when you go down to the cellar, it’s an amazing place cause it’s really what it used to be many years ago and you can’t hear anything upstairs. It’s all closed in. So it’s one of them incredible places. I’m right now in Charleston and there’s so many places here and you know, so you just tell me what town it is You are, and I’ll tell you where to go.

Eran: That’s awesome.

Chris: So Eran, I just heard last call here from my bartender. Do you have time for one more?

Eran: Yes, of course.

Chris: If you opened a cybersecurity theme bar, what would the name be and what would your signature drink be called?

Eran: Hmm. It’s funny, the name that I thought at the time, but I kind of like stone and pebble, but it’s like nothing to do with cybersecurity.

Eran: That was before I decided to do the cyber bar kind. I done, you know, it’s a good question. I have to think about the name. It’s a little different and I had the few, but I think my drink, my signature drink would probably be, have to be a maple old fashion. Yes. that’d be my signature drink.

Eran: And you can have that. I’ll let you have that with either whiskey or rum. But if I have to choose, you know, I’ll, I’ll do it probably with a good rye whistle pig. Even though people say, Why are you wasting whistle pig money on a, on a, on an old fashion? I think I can tell the difference. So I don’t care what you say, but, and I think it has to do a lot with the presentation too.

Eran: You, you kind of, you know, a quick thing. they said that you drink with your eyes too. What you see is, makes a lot of difference. So

Chris: Eran, where can our listeners find you and connect with you online?

Eran: So when you go on the IDSeal website, obviously we have a blog there. We just literally launch a new website, gave it the little facelift working on.

Eran: Loading everything to the blog. Now the blog is there. You can see videos, you can contact, you can follow us, and you know, and you have questions. It’s kind of like contact us and people ask questions and we even on a Facebook page or whatever, people ask and we respond. And that’s the best way.

Chris: Eran, thanks so much for joining me today, man.

Chris: Everyone go out and check out Id seal id seal.com and I look forward to catching up with you man, and enjoying a craft cocktail with you in person.

Eran: Absolutely looking forward to having you doing with You live podcast and streaming it live from some bar brewery here in Charleston.

Eran: Maybe get you here. We’ll work on that and hopefully we’ll get to do that sooner rather than later.

Chris: That sounds amazing, man. Listeners, you heard it here first. Be sure to stay tuned for that one. Absolutely. I appreciate you man. Take care and be safe.

Eran: Thank you very much, Chris. Have a great one. Thanks for having me.