By SUZANNE M. SCHMIDT

After helping businesses prevent identity theft for the last three years, Temple Terrace-based Rocket Ready will now be helping individuals.

The team at Rocket Ready, 10730 N. 56th St., spends their days hacking large and small companies trying to find their weaknesses. Todd Snapp, president of the company, said he and his employees focus on people and not software.

“We try to hack into a company to see what their weaknesses are,” Snapp said. “We don’t do computer hacking, we call and e-mail people. We call them on the phone and pretend we are managers in the same company or customers needing help.”
After spending years learning the hackers’ best techniques, Snapp and his employees have been busy putting their skills to work.

“The knowledge we have gained from helping businesses can help individuals,” Snapp said. “The same types of methods hackers use to attack businesses are used on individuals. People receive the phishing e-mails and the phone calls. We found there were a big set of individuals who are afraid of becoming a victim of identity theft, but they don’t know what they can do to prevent it.”
The company has just started to provide an identity readiness package for individuals. The Web-based package can be bought and accessed on the Internet. The package includes a web-based resource center with training courses, a newsletter and a hotline.

“The package will help individuals who are afraid of being a victim of identity theft,” Snapp said. “The reality is that identity theft methods are changing on a daily basis, so everything is updated regularly. We are taking the knowledge we have learned to educate others.”

The training courses will be available through the resource center Web site. New courses featuring the latest online scams will be updated regularly. These courses teach people about the different scams out there and how to keep from falling victim.

“The resource center site will be updated with news, new techniques and alerts,” Snapp said. “It will be updated regularly in order to keep it up to speed with the hackers.”

Individuals will be able to either e-mail or call and get advice about identity theft through the hotline.
Snapp said it is easy to become a victim of identity theft.

“There is a misconception that only stupid people fall victim to ID theft,” Snapp said. “ID thieves are really good at what they do. The most intelligent person can be duped by a phone call, an e-mail or by a piece of mail. I have seen some e-mails that if I were not in this business I would have been tricked.”
There are many tricks identity thieves use. For instance, identity thieves can use caller ID against people. If a person gets a phone call and on the caller ID it displays their bank name, they would naturally think it is their bank calling. Then the hacker would give the person a number to call back.

When the person calls the number, there is an automated message prompting a person to put in their account number and other personal information. Within minutes the hacker has all the information they need. This method is called vishing and is a relatively new scam, Snapp said.

“This is a very easy scam to do,” he said. “It only takes a couple hundred bucks. It is easily prevented by always only calling a number you know.”

Brent Bennett, Rocket Ready’s vice president of technology, said most identity theft occurs because people are not educated.

“There is lots of software out there to help,” Bennett said. “We recommend some anti-spyware programs, password management programs and e-mail spam filtering programs, but most identity theft is not really a computer problem. Computers are just a tool, most of the problem can be solved by just training people.”

Bennett cautioned people against leaving USB drives or CDs lying around. When a person finds it and puts it into their computer to see what is on it, they become a victim the moment it enters their computer.
“The worst part is they will never know,” Bennett said. “By putting it in the computer, they have given complete access of their computer to the identity thief.”

The team at Rocket Ready said they have been in places where even computer hackers have never gone.

“We have listened to conference calls, been in accounts we shouldn’t have and have even set up voice mail boxes in companies we never worked for,” Snapp said. “Sometimes people hack into the computer, but it is so much easier to just fool people. There are just little things a person can do that are not necessarily common sense. If you don’t know what scams are out there, then you can easily fall victim to it.”

Bennett said some basic things to remember is to never click on the link when receiving a strange e-mail. If contacting the bank or any other account, always call a number you know.

“There are just small changes to behavior that can help so much,” Bennett said. “Even if there is the best software, thieves will find a way to get around them.”

Just fixing a credit report after identity theft can be a hassle, Snapp said. It can take 35 to 40 hours to fix identity theft, which is why he and his team would like to help prevent it.
For more information, call 386-1996 or visit http://www.rocketready.com/.