➡ The Healthy American Peggy Hall talks about a big problem: some companies are selling personal information of U.S. military people online. This info includes health and financial details, travel, and where they are located. It’s dangerous because bad people can use this info for blackmail or tracking them. Peggy suggests a tool called Aura. It finds these companies, asks them to delete your info, and offers insurance against identity theft.

➡ A speaker shares her bad experiences with personal and financial data being misused. She had trouble with PayPal and Venmo; they froze her accounts and she lost money. She uses Aura to protect her data and recommends being careful with your online money, like using special cards for shopping online. She stresses the need to be aware of how you manage your data and money on the internet.

➡ The author talks about getting charged by Google for things she didn’t buy. She tried to fix it but had trouble at first. She also didn’t like how Wells Fargo treated its workers, especially about their religious views. After a long time, her bank said the Google charges were wrong and gave her money back. She also had issues with PayPal and Venmo but got some compensation. From her experiences, she advises people to be careful with their personal information online and stand against dishonest digital actions.

Hey friends, it’s Peggy hall, back with you from thehealthyamerican. org. Have you heard this story? It just came out in November, and it is all about data brokers selling U. S. Military personnel info. I want to bring this coverage to you and then bring you a solution and then I want to talk about any of your personal stories. I want to share what happened to me. And it was not so much that they were selling my data data, although I am concerned about that, but I do have some protection.

But it is the way that we are being targeted and how that could put us at risk. I’ve had my, well, it’s not exactly a bank account, but I’ve been canceled by PayPal and Venmo. I’ve had issues with my website, with different delivery mechanisms for my newsletter. And so I am always personally concerned about my data online. And I also want to give you a bonus tip about what you can do to protect yourself if you do do online purchases.

That is something that I do and it’s something that a lot of people have been doing, especially since all of the hogwash was sloshed all over us in the previous years and people weren’t able to go shopping. So the first thing I want to do is actually bring you this story. And I’ve got a headline here and it says, US military members personal data being sold online being sold by online brokers.

So get this. Sensitive, highly detailed personal data for thousands of active duty and veteran us military members can be purchased for as little as one cent per name. And this is happening through these data broker websites. Let me know if this has happened to you or someone you know. And again, this study just came out by Duke University in November. And researchers warned that data can be easily obtained and used by malicious actors to target current.

I’m just reading the headlines here. Current and former military personnel, we’re going to dig a little deeper. Their families and acquaintances with them. I mean, imagine that even if you’re an acquaintance of a military member, they can track you through these things. So there’s blackmail, misinformation campaigns. And I actually want to show you this report and I will have a link for you if you would like to dig deeper.

So let me share my screen. And we are hopping right on over. And this is it. Data brokers and the sale of data on us military personnel just came out last month. So I highlighted a couple of interesting points here. The data brokerage ecosystem is a multibillion dollar industry comprised of companies gathering, inferring aggregating and then selling, licensing and sharing data on Americans, as well as providing technological services based on that data? All of this is troubling to me.

So this is the entire report, just about 50 pages. And I wanted to bring to you this other highlight that it is not difficult to obtain sensitive data about active duty members of the military, their families and veterans, including non public, individually identified and sensitive data, such as health data, financial data, and information about religious practices. And this is absolutely stunning, because the other thing, and I’ve got a couple of notes here that I want to share with you, not only are they getting the information, such as the name of the individual, their home address, their email, their cell phone number, their marital status, homeowner status, estimated home value, how would you like all of this personal information about you being available for people to buy and even just know about if they made charitable donations? And this has implicated more than 10,000 service members.

And again, they’re paying basically pennies for this information. These data services that are selling this information also sold info about medical conditions, financial situation, credit score, political affiliation, religious identity, gender and sexuality, address, contact information, even on their children, their ages, their sexes, their families, their family members, including their hobbies. And think about this, how a person could be implicated in this. Let’s say that they were going to a casino or a certain type of bar or somewhere else, how that information could get out and be harmful.

This also included information related to international travel, lots of sensitive information, including their geolocation data. And remember, on your phone, these data brokers know where you are, where you go, and they sell that information. I know that is of a concern to you. We’ve spoken on this channel before about, and I’m chuckling a little bit because it’s so strange that you can be thinking about something, not even talking about it, not even researching it, and you’re like, it’s coming up on my phone.

I mean, I’ve done videos about these very strange things, and I want to try to minimize that. And I know that you do, too. So the geolocation data, really, that is a huge risk. Think about the bad guys in foreign locations that would try to stalk or track you. Now, I’m not a person that lives in fear, but I do want to be smart, which is why I use these virtual backgrounds.

That’s one thing that I do to protect my privacy. And in the early days of all of the hogwash, I was doing a lot of lives. I was showing everybody where I was going, and I had more than one person say to me, you know what, Peggy? You might want to just be a little more anonymous in terms of where you are, who you’re with, what you’re doing.

I thought, you know, at this stage of the game, it’s probably a good idea. So I don’t want to be, and I know you don’t want to be targeted as some political or military or high profile person where they’re going to try to get your information and even worse, track you. So again, they can figure out and find out where you’re going for medical treatments. Of course, we know all about medical status, how we want to keep that private.

So think about this. The active and veteran military members and their family members and their acquaintances have now had this information at risk, and people are paying for it. So they could be at risk for profiling, blackmail, targeting with information campaigns and other things. And basically, we are all under this kind of risk. So it’s not just the military, although this came to mind because of this report, but basically, they want to get all that information and target us as well.

And this is where I want to share with you. It’s actually a sponsor message, but it ties right into this article, and it is a way, it is a solution that can help you fight back. So I want to share that with you. And this is a company called Aura. It’s a new sponsor to the program. I’m so grateful to be able to bring you this kind of information so that you can protect yourself as well.

It is an all in one digital safety tool that can identify these data brokers. So what happens is this company will go to work on your behalf, and they will submit these opt out requests for you. Brokers are legally. It’s so funny, isn’t it? They’re legally required to follow the law. They are illegally required to remove your info if you ask them to, but they make it super hard to do so.

So let aura handle it for you. I want to actually show you where that is. And of course, I have a link for you. And I want to thank my healthy american audience, who has been thanking me for bringing these messages. One subscriber said, I’m grateful that you show us this. You’ve done the legwork. It’s something you would like us to know about. So take a look here.

I’ll have a link for you. It’s aura Compeggyhall. You can start a free trial. There you go. 14 day trial, plus up to 70% off. I want to make sure I have all of the important points to share with you, and it’s a very affordable price. You get peace of mind knowing that these plans include up to $1 million of identity theft insurance for each adult, and you can get five adults in your family plan.

So that’s fantastic. Again, 14 days for free. I want to show you how it works. So I really would love for you to do this. This is a company and a product that I trust. It’s a us based company with a 100% us based support staff that’s available. Don’t know about you, but the last time I called Verizon, I couldn’t really even get through. So the fact that you can get somebody on the phone from the US if you need help is fantastic.

Let me do this. I want to show you. Well, here’s the pricing and how much. The comparison with other programs that you might want to do. An antivirus protection, password manager, identity monitoring. A lot of people do that. The VPN, which I’ve talked about in years past. But this is like an all in one. The home title monitoring, the data broker removal, all of those things would add up to quite a bit more than the $12.

And that’s the individual plan. What I want to do is show you. I think this is really cool. So this is just an eight second little example of how you could get an alert to let you know, get a critical alert if there has been a compromise on your passwords, for example. So you would get something like this that just comes through and they would tell you what to do, why you’re getting the alert, what they’re doing, and how you can take care of that.

And then here is an example of this kind of information that the bad guys want to get their hands on, they can find out exactly your device id, right? Every device has an id. This is data that can be sold. The device type, is it a cell phone, is it a laptop? The timestamp of when the device hits the location, the precise latitude of the device, the longitude, all this other stuff, and of course, the ip address.

So I wanted to bring this to your attention. I wanted to take a little extra time to explain what’s going on and why this is so important. And then again, please go to Auraaura compeggyhall. You’ve got this free trial, 14 days, up to 70% off. It is very simple. You sign up, you activate your account, and then you are protected and friends. The reason I’m so sensitive to this is because being a public figure, and I don’t know if it’s just because of that or the type of work that I’m involved in.

But I feel that I have been targeted in different ways. I have had this kind of protection on my devices, and it’s interesting because I know when it’s active, because I will get well, there will be ways that I will understand that, and I will see that. I’m grateful that there are opportunities like this to have your data protected. A couple of years ago, I did an event, kind of.

I’m thinking about it now. In retrospect, I’m not sure I would have done it. And it was a very large event. I know that there were thousands of people that viewed it, several hundred in person. It was in Anaheim, perhaps you were even there. Lots of great speakers, and I was one of the speakers. And the very next day, I mean, I don’t know if this was a coincidence.

I think it’s more than a coincidence. The very next day, following this event, where it was a very well promoted event, I was canceled by PayPal and Venmo. And not just canceled by PayPal and Venmo, but they froze my funds. And it was money that I needed. It was money that some of you had donated to me. It was money that had come in from programs and products that I was selling.

And I was absolutely stunned. And I thought that there was an error. And this was prior to PayPal issuing their very strict terms and conditions. And I immediately started to do some digging. And the reason I’m giving you this example is just to let you know how, in general, we are being targeted. And I want to have every bit of protection that I can. So this type with aura.

com to protect my data from being sold and my device ip addresses from being known, that’s just another layer of protection. How I’m protecting myself from PayPal and Venmo, it’s a little bit of a different story, but I wanted to tie it together because, frankly, I actually had not been well informed on what those terms and conditions were. Come to find out, PayPal and Venmo are not subject to the same banking regulations as your own bank.

Now, I know there are horror stories out there of people having their bank accounts closed. Dr. Mercola, who is a prominent voice in natural healing and so forth, and he has been a prominent voice in the health freedom movement. I know some of you are on either sides of what you think about him, but the point is, he was in the news because of the bank. I’m not sure.

I think it was chase. I could have that wrong. But the fact is, his bank canceled not only his accounts, but those of his family and associates. There are horror stories about banks closing people’s accounts. Just as an aside, I’m not giving any financial advice, but it’s probably a good idea to have different bank accounts at different banks with different amounts of money so that you’re not going to be left high and dry.

If you’re counting on that many to pay your mortgage, your car payment, whatever bills you have and the money that’s coming in for your livelihood, it just is logical that you would want to protect that maybe in a couple of different bank accounts. That’s a horror story to me, and I lived through it with PayPal. Come to find out, there are no banking regulations. It’s not a bank.

It’s like a transfer of funds. Even though I would transfer that PayPal money out of PayPal every day, maybe every other day, I should have done it every single day. That day that I tried to do it, that’s when the funds were frozen for six months. And they told me that they were doing an investigation during that time to determine whether or not I had come across those funds in a nefarious way.

And apparently, I guess they could keep the money if that happened, because I’m on the up and up and I’m not engaged in anything that’s fraudulent. They did release that money, but it was several months. I never got my money back from venmo. It was a few hundred dollars, but it’s the principal of the thing, and they just froze that account. I also was using stripe as a payment gateway, and in 2021, they also froze that account for, my, gosh, a couple of months.

And that was money that I relied on for my livelihood. There had to be an investigation. I had to provide documents and all of that. I’m like, this is crazy. And it was at the height of all of the hogwash. So that made me very sensitive and aware to how easy it could be for you, your data, your money, to be at risk. And I’m not a person that lives in doom and gloom.

I’m a solutions oriented person. So I want to give you one more tip here. If you are purchasing things online and you don’t want to expose your debit card, especially to risk, and the reason why is a debit card does not have the same protections as a credit card. Now, I’m a person that does not believe in debt. I don’t want to go into debt. I cut up all my credit cards, but using a credit card with a limit, and you can actually have a very low limit card.

You could even have a card that you preload with money. So it’s not a traditional credit card where you would get yourself into trouble, but using that card that’s not tied to your own personal bank account, having that be a dedicated card for your online purchases is going to. And again, this is not financial advice. It’s just something that I know is a good tip and common sense that could help protect you from putting your own bank account at risk.

Debit cards do not carry the same level of protection as a credit card. So a credit card you can. And again, I’m not a banking financial expert here, but this is my understanding and my experience that a credit card you could put in a dispute, there could be a charge and a charge back where with your debit card. Although I have had some investigations, I got to tell you the end of the story, which is really interesting.

It usually takes a longer time and it’s not as straightforward. So if you are shopping online, perhaps a preloaded prepaid card that nobody can get access to, and as a bonus, you’ve got your own budget set in because you get to determine how much you want to have on that card. Let me know in a comment below. Do you protect yourself with any of these types of programs like the one I told you about, slash Peggy hall, where they will monitor to see if your data is being sold and if there is any other Fraudulent stuff going on.

I want you to dig in by checking out the website. I’ll have a link for you in the description box below. Then think about the prepaid debit card. I do not use PayPal or Venmo at all. There is an app, I guess, or a mechanism by which you can do a direct bank transfer through Zelle. Some people do that, but I just simply do not use PayPal. The stripe got all sorted out and there was one more thing that I wanted to tell you.

And this was about what happened with PayPal and my own bank. About a year prior to PayPal freezing my account, I had some suspicious charges on my own personal bank account. And the weirdest thing is it was charged to Google and I think there were three charges for $500 each. And I thought, this is so bizarre. I’m not advertising. This was prior to the healthy american. I’ve not bought anything like what does Google sell other than advertising? And I put in a request to the fraud unit with my bank and I said, would you please check into these charges because I have never entered into any contract.

I’ve never purchased anything from Google. There are three exact equal amounts, like month after month. So it almost seems like that would be a charge for advertising, but I never did it. So would you please investigate this? Because I think that’s wrong and I want my money back. So it took several weeks, and by several weeks, I mean probably a couple of months. And they came back and they said, you know, we cannot find any evidence of fraud, so these charges are going to stay.

And I was completely indignant. I’ve been with this bank almost 20 years. I’m like, you’re believing Google over me? I never made these charges. I was really upset, and I was planning on changing banks. And then, wouldn’t you know it, all of the hogwash happened. I got distracted, and in fact, I tried to open an account at smells like Wells Fargo. Oh, excuse me, Wells Fargo. I have nicknames for different banks and things.

And the reason I say that is because they were so discriminatory against employees, especially on religious beliefs, over these last couple of years. But thankfully, due to the healthy Americans that I mentored and educated who stood up for their rights, Wells Fargo finally got rid of all of those illegitimate, illegal, immoral, unethical, unspeakable requirements in order to keep your job. And I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I went to Wells Fargo. They wouldn’t even allow me to open up a bank account. I’m like, what? Do you got to be kidding me? I can’t remember at the time what their reason was. I think it was God’s rejection, was God’s protection. I never ended up going with them after all. But there have been so many more restrictions and regulations in opening up bank accounts after the Patriot act, following 911.

So I never ended up going with a different bank. And then, guess was it was within a matter of days after PayPal canceled my account, right? And this is like, I don’t remember the exact time, but maybe a year after I disputed the charges with my bank against Google, I get a letter in the mail from my bank. And whenever I get a letter in the mail from my bank, my heart kind of pounds a little bit.

I’m like, am I overdrawn? Did I do something wrong? Is there a bounce check? Maybe that’s just me, but I don’t like getting letters from the bank. So I kind of looked at it, I took a deep breath, and I opened up the letter from the bank. I shared this in a previous video, back in 2021, maybe it was 2020. And the letter said, we have concluded our investigation of your claim against Google and we have found that those were fraudulent charges and we are redepositing know, reversing those charges so that money is going to be showing up in your bank account.

And friends, my lovely healthy Americans, it was within the ballpark of the money. It was almost exactly the same amount of money that PayPal and Venmo had taken from me. And I’m telling you, that was like a heavenly hug. It was a reminder, the way I view it from God, that I was doing the right thing. And I just found that so interesting. Let me know if you’ve ever had an experience like that, specifically with financial dealings where maybe somebody owed you money and then somebody else, you got a financial gift, or maybe you were able to bless someone financially.

These stories are so encouraging to me. So there you have it. Let’s stay protected. Let’s keep our eyes on our data. Let’s minimize the possibility that information about us is being sold. That really rubs me the wrong way, that people are benefiting, and I know they are. I know this phone and my computer technology and ecommerce, they kind of have sucked us into it. So let’s push back in the ways that work.

I hope these solutions were helpful for you, friends. Thanks for being on board with me. It’s a little bit of a bonus video for you. I normally don’t broadcast on the weekends, but there’s so much that I want to share with you as we close out the year. And I’m so very grateful to have you on board. I know. I will have a special video for you on Monday.

It will be a premiere, meaning I will have pre recorded it. But I want to make sure that you get this message. You know what, maybe, just possibly, depending on the timeframe, Pastor David and I might just hop on with a special new year message. Maybe we’ll do it on his channel instead. Which is true hope with Pastor David. And that is on YouTube, where every Tuesday he has a true hope Tuesday full of spiritual encouragement.

Yes, I think we’ll do it. That. .

See more of The Healthy American Peggy Hall on their Public Channel and the MPN The Healthy American Peggy Hall channel.