if there is one thing i have _never_ done to my parents, or _anyone_ for that matter, is make fun of them if they call me and ask me for my professional opinion in tech matters. this has extended to situations when they think the situation is shoddy like they are being taken in a scam. i think _this_ is the single reason why my parents have never fell victim to scams. i feel that _most_ parents, or elderly people for that matter, fall victim cause they feel pressure from both ends... the first being the scammers themselves, the second being scared to ask _anyone_ if the situation is legit for fear of being made fun of.
_noone_ should feel scared of being ridicule when asking any question regarding their safety or well-being.
You'll sit down to talk to your parents someday and the damage will already be done.
The scammers are fast. They are good. They are like vultures hovering over the elderly. Our parents don't see this stuff coming, and they comply too quickly.
My wife administers a nursing home and this is a daily problem. Their residents get calls from scammers constantly and they have to stop little old men and women from walking out of the building to catch a bus to go to the bank to send money to one scammer after another.
They are always telling them, no, the medicare office does not want you to put all your money in a government bank account for them to make deposits to - those are scammer accounts. No, a nephew you never heard about does NOT need to be bailed out of jail. No, you do not have to buy a pre-paid visa card over the phone in order to pay for medications. No, you never have to purchase a coupon for $50 that will save you $100 at the store, those don't exist. It goes on and on and on and on.
My mother phoned me because her laptop was yelling at her. Bad guys had taken over her browser (IE maybe? Or Edge? I genuinely don't remember) and on start-up it was repeating a verbal message on maximum volume about how they now controlled her computer and she needed to call them to... well you know how these go.
But she had the sense to realise that even though it said she must call _them_ she could rather call _me_ and since it was yelling at her she put the laptop down and left it yelling into thin air. I walked her through the surprisingly easy process to disable it and get her back in her comfort zone. I explained what they'd tried to achieve, that they had tried to trick her into thinking they were more powerful than they really were - and praised her for taking the time to call me.
Unfortunately, because it had happened so quickly he didn't remember everything the scammer had asked him to do. So it took quite a bit of searching until we figured it out.
a lot of the situations you described are targeted at people with dementia and other neurological disorders. there really isn't anything you can do in those cases.
thankfully my parent have their wits and don't suffer from such disorders.
This… seems a bit naive to think your parents will call you first every single time they want to do something special with their computer. It makes me think of parents that assume their teenagers aren't doing anything stupid because they are confident the kids are sharing everything with them.
Anectode: My in-laws are renting their property through Internet. They occasionally receive calls by interested renters and they successfully manage it by themselves. They are almost in their 70's. One day someone had a payment issue and asked to pay them differently, asking for account information so they could send the money directly. They managed to trick them into putting their card number on a fake website displaying the agreed-upon amount. They lost about 100€, the bank couldn't revert the transaction for some reason.
Parents only call you when they are unsure of something. The problem is when the scammer manage to convince them everything is normal, which is exactly what they are good at.
I know you said 100€, but I do not belive a bank will make the claim. I was in that situation twice, the first time they did not even mention it, and the other time they did mention it. When I asked "and so what" they said that they just informed me of that but they they will, of course, not make the claim.
> if you think it's naive for your users or loved ones to call you when they have the slightness doubt about something...
I think you just affirmed their point. You're acknowledging they only call when they have even the slightest doubt. They're saying that is exactly the problem, because they won't call when they have no doubt that everything is normal.
In 2020, does this mean anything online anymore? Or does it mean more than ever? I've gotten to the point where a -50 karma is just a momentary annoyance, and I just think of it as "imaginary Internet points."
I could see how a kid who was conditioned to see their self-value in karma or views might take it hard. I've certainly been in that boat. Has there been a peak, then decline in online social media cynicism, like there was with child computer literacy? (Went up, peaked, then went down.) (Thankfully, my parents have always been extreme social media cynics.)
At the end, I tell them that if something just feels off, even if they can't figure out why, I'd rather they call or message me on Slack than ignore it. It absolutely never bothers me when they do it - in fact, it makes me feel better. Maybe 1% of reports are actual issues, but I'd rather deal with 99% false positives than miss even one thing.
If you are at a FAANG, then the phish success rate against your company is probably in the mid single digit percentages.
If you’re at a Fortune 50 company, then the phish success rate against your company is most likely in the high single digit percentage range — if you’re lucky.
If you’re at a company not big enough to be in the Fortune 50, then the phish success rate at your company is most likely in the double digit percentage range. That’s right, over 10% of all phishing messages sent to people in your company will end up hooking their targets.
And the sad thing is that we techies are the ones that are supposed to be most aware of these things and most likely to be able to protect against them.
A friends parent got done by a phone scam. "Your router has been compromised, please let us check your PC, oh no they've got the computer, install this. Oh no - they've hacked your bank account and used it to Launder money, the fraud office will contact you. etc etc. The bank saved them when they tried to move a second load of money.
I don't believe for a moment they didn't contact anyone because of a fear of being laughed at - they believed the narrative that this was a secret operation. Ironically it had all the hallmarks of a classic eve online scam.
Do not assume all scammers are mediocre and transparent. Do not assume a close personal relationship is enough.
My parents ring me if they get an odd popup on a webpage to double check if they should ignore it or not. If someone calls them telling them there's something wrong they politely tell the person they will ask me to look at it and politely end the call. And if they purchase stuff off a new website they check with me before they make any purchase so they don't pass their credit card to a dodgy site.
It's better they call and ask me than take a risk, last thing I want to happen is my parents to fall victim to a scam.
What if the scammer plot "do not call your kids" into their scheme?
No tech company these days will ever call a customer, especially not Microsoft.
If you do receive a call from a more traditional institution like a bank, don't divulge any information. All banks have strong identity theft protections in place, but you haven't authenticated the caller. Ask for a reference id so that you can call the company back using a phone number that you yourself looked up on their company web page.
If the caller has any reason not to comply (and they will have plenty of reasons why they can't), or they insist you use a number that they provide, hang up and forget about it.
The problem with this, in the UK at least, is that banks do call and ask for personal info such as date of birth, etc. The irony always seems lost on them when you refuse to give it.
They immediately understood, gave me a reference number, and told me to get my credit card and call the number on the back and give the reference number.
When I called back I was able to pick up right where I left off.
On one hand I was impressed that they had this flow, but on the other hand I was disappointed that they were training people that it's ok to give personal information on the phone.
I had another bank do what I thought was the right thing. I got a recorded call that said, "We believe someone used your card to make a gas purchase in Las Vegas. We have locked your card. If this was you, please call the number on the back of your card, press 3, and an operator will be able to unlock your card. Or you can log in with the app and unlock the card yourself."
They did all the right things. They told me unique information that helped identify they weren't a scammer but didn't reveal anything too personal, and then told me how to securely contact them.
Don't know if that scam still works, or not, and the same flow is probably used by legitimate senders.
I've tried to explain to them several times that they are training their customers to fall or scams, but they seem to be unable to comprehend.
My pension provider, Scottish Widows, did this to me a few weeks back, from a private number to boot.
I told them I'd call them back and they were fine. Not sure if it was a scam or not but suspect not as they were pretty ok about the whole thing.
That said, the "call back" test is an easy smell test -- a bad actor will have a huge problem with that, while the bank usually won't think too much of it.
Thankfully I don't share passwords across accounts, so only had to update that one!
I mention it because (and this is I think a good contribution to the thread) "getting upset" correlates strongly with "hiding something" and with "axe to grind with the world" and with "not disciplined or patient enough to get a job."
It doesn't need to be a very good password, because it's not as though it can be brute forced. It's like the Socialist Millionaire's Protocol situation, a human is in the loop, if you get the answer wrong twice the human is already very annoyed, so you cannot try 100 passwords let alone a billion.
Although they still try to ask for your DOB first, which means you can't have a blanket "If someone calls from your bank and asks for your DOB, they are definitely fraudsters" rule.
Note that fraudsters are doing things like faking caller ID and holding the line open, playing dialling tone on landline calls so that you hang up, think you are dialling again, and actually are still on the original call. The fix there is to use your mobile to call them back, or call someone else first. You can also feed them wrong information and see how they react, but I'd still do the call back thing.
Its quite disconcerting, especially as most corporate VOIP extends to mobiles.
If it's a landline, call on a mobile.
We've moved them to all Apple devices. Locked down everything (the account on the Mac is "standard" not Administrator level). Set up a G Suite account with restricted access (cannot install apps, cannot install extensions into Chrome). Use 1Password for passwords, 2FA for all accounts that allow it. Removed Flash early on, removed Java runtime. Turned off auto–update on the Mac and iPhone/iPad.
I initially tried parental controls on the Mac but found it was a nightmare for even their limited use of apps outside of Chrome.
Still after 10+ years of “training” this person to call me for any technical issues I get surprises like yesterday when they wanted to install an “ad blocker that keeps popping up in Chrome”, which was, of course, malware.
Probably will ditch the Mac and switch to a Chromebook later this year.
Why? I would have done the opposite.
Apple itself isn't too bad in this regard, but apps do this all the time.
This took way too long to diagnose now that I live hundreds of miles away.
I wish UX designers would slow their roll on things like this in sensitive applications like online banking. There are times for ads and times for when ads should not be present.
I really wish it was the norm in the software world to offer UI updates and security fixes independently, so we could upgrade the good without having to accept the bad.
(An incidental benefit of a Linux household - the calls from "Microsoft" become a lot funnier and less scary.)
I've also noticed that installing adblock helps, since there's less shady stuff to click.
[0] As for as using the GUI is concerned. Normal people don't care about the internal workings of their technology.
I did this with my daughter, and never told her it wasn't Windows. She didn't know or care for years -- until she developed a taste for cutting-edge video games.
Not just for parents. If say I've rolled in one night, after one too many beers after work, might be handy if my wife had to confirm any random purchases I attempt to make.
And it can be async too (at the cost of convenience): "You will be notified when your download is complete and the security administrator has reviewed it for safety"
Sounds pretty easy to implement, but it would take a long time to get my folks used to it and a sibling or two probably wouldn't hurt for efficiency.
It's 2020 and the "Personal Computer" paradigm is past its expiration date.
Want to keep hobbying with Windows and manage your "PC" like a pet, good luck with that!
Hardware should be managed like cattle with a cloud native setup if you ask me.
Racehorse owners loose 90 cent on every dollar invested, cowboys fly helicopters.
In a way I understand them. Google wanting to track you is nefarious but still, the security from viruses/hackers/cryptolocking viruses is unmatched for a Chromebook or an iPad.
My own father wants privacy, has has Apple products, he doesn't want (i/any)Cloud, I buy him a Synology NAS saying the data is his, then Photos libraries go corrupt because the NAS does not have APFS attributes (damn thing works for months until it doesn't). What a nightmare. And I'm explaining all this to a man that doesn't really understand where his Browser ends and the internet starts. So he will wonder if his data is on his Macbook because he can see it in the browser logged into the Synolgy. And then he won't close the browser because the Synology is backing up... It's pretty complex if you think about it. I can understand all the distrust.
We literally have magical powers at our fingertips. People however do not want to spend money on the software that makes this possible, period.
We still have companies like Coke that sell sugar water and propel a tsunami of obesitas at scale with an advertisement budget that only recently is surpassed by Google's annual profit.
There is advertisement and advertisement, helping every business with tools to sell more products and services is moving us forward. Google's Chrome OS offering is a clear business contract which has a paid option.
It is up to you if you want to keep using it for free. I hope more of "us" can convince more people to start paying for software services like GSuite and Chrome OS.
And Apple's iCloud runs on Google's Cloud Spanner. So it's the same "server" anyway.
2. Set their phone to send everything to voicemail that isn't a contact. Many scams don't leave one & if they do it can be discussed with appropriate people first.
3. Install a browser like Brave or extensions that block most garbage on the internet.
4. Setup their important files & pictures to be backed up automatically to one or more cloud services.
5. Not related to tech scammers, but more the ransom scammers or your grandchild needs money scammers - Always have some type of secret agreed upon phrases or questions that no one would ever know or be able to find out. Even better, make it a question someone could easily search for but have a ridiculous answer that is an inside joke between the two of you.
6. (Geek Bonus) - Enjoy watching social engineering videos together! They're entertaining, informative & I personally think more enjoyable than most of the stuff that passes for movies, sports & TV shows. Ok, this last one is probably not for everyone.
Do you have any recommended playlists? Did not know that is a thing, might be fun to check.
The videos have a pretty broad appeal -- even if you don't always get the memes he references, it's still funny to watch him pretend to be an old lady over the phone -- and you'll learn a lot about the way these scams usually operate.
What is great about those is most anyone can relate & understand to what they're usually doing. No terminals. If they use a gadget, it's something you can buy off the shelf usually & they describe what it does in simple terms. This makes it much more educational for most people.
Forewarning, typing "Social Engineering" into YouTube can cost you many hours!
That being said, getting my parents from Windows to Mac was to biggest ROI. Before, with Windows and even Malware Bytes Anti-Malware, I had to literally drive home hours for emergency tech support.
However, I’ve educated them against popup clicking now so much that they pointedly ignore Mac update popup notifications. Oh well, it is what it is. And what it is is much better now in Mac land.
There have been many studies that have found that education level, job function ,etc are not indicators of whether someone will fall for a scam. It can and does happen to people all over the place.
Passwords are as private as the most embarrassing thing you can imagine. Never give them out to anyone. Ever.
No financial institution will randomly call you unless its a fraud alert. Even then, ask to call back and then call the company using their direct number to verify. Anyone trying to keep you on the line is suspect. You have a right to hang up at any time.
Treat your email address like your home address. Would you randomly give your home address to strangers?
Phone numbers are so easy to fake you could do it on your cell phone. Do not trust caller ID.
If in doubt call your children.
And I do get a lot of calls about everything but I'm glad my mother calls to verify instead of taking a chance. So many older parents stay in parental mode when their children are well into adulthood and tend to trust their judgement before their children's. That or they don't want to bother them or even admit they know less. Hubris and ignorance are the problem.
This is an obvious scam, but for people who aren't up on this and fearful of "the man" I expect these kinds of scams work for every 1 in 100k people at best and are still probably lucrative enough for them to keep going.
The answer for the OP problem and the Canadian problem are the same: the government never calls you, Microsoft never calls you, no tech company will ever call you.
And none of them will ever ask for payment in gift cards.
A lot of work to set up, but it might be worth it in your case.
Put almost all of her money in a main account that requires approval from you or your brother.
Give your mom a checking account with regular monthly deposits from the main account.
We did this for my mom, and she was relieved to have the burden off her shoulders.
Maybe NLP will get to the point that an automated answering service would pass for human, and screen callers effectively and cheaply.
She got a fake virus alert on some skeezy website, and she immediately called the number, without checking with me.
They tried to talk her through enabling remote access so they could get in and do whatever horrible thing they intended, but they had to get her to identify her IP address and type a few commands first.
She tried going back and forth from the telephone to the computer in another room, and the scammer finally got angry and screamed at her, "can't you borrow a cellphone from one of your neighbours?" When she told him she couldn't, the man just hurled obscenities and hung up.
These guys really depend upon you being able to talk to them while typing and clicking.
They always catch on too fast with me when I pull these stunts :(
1. Never provide anyone any information on a call you receive. If you receive a call, go wit the expectations that it is a scam/spam. If it seems genuine, you call them back using a number from their website. Don't call back on a number provided by the caller.
2. Don't pick up unknown numbers.Let them leave a voicemail.
3. Most Govt. orgs or banks will not call you to request personal information over phone at least in the United States.
4. There are common scams/spams including Windows/Tech Support, IRS, You have won a vacation scam etc. Don't ever believe those. They are always a scam.
5. Never ever click/download a link/attachment on an email that you are not sure about.
6. Teach everyone how to read email headers if possible to verify the sender. It is too easy to spoof the from name/email. Fun fact: my wife recently received emails from ME (obviously not) asking her to wire money for some urgent need. lol. But she almost fell for it and I was shocked. The reason was email spoofing. I immediately showed her how to check the headers.
Most importantly, teach your parents or other non tech savvy friends/family to never trust anyone over the phone or email even if it seems like someone they know. Always be suspicious. It is ok to do so.
Oh and as the tax season approaches, the IRS scammers will be out in full force. Make sure that everyone knows IRS NEVER CALLS you especially to ask for money. IRS will always send you a registered letter in mail, always.
What I do, and strongly recommend to others, is two-fold: First, don't allow your mail reader to render HTML emails. Second, never follow any links in emails, nor trust that any other contact information is correct.
If you get an email from an entity you know, and it is asking you to follow a link or call a number, ignore contact methods/information in the email itself and contact the entity using your already established information instead.
"Can you come here the computer/phone/ipad is saying something, have I been hacked"
- no, it's telling you that you have an email, no it's telling you that you are getting a call, no that's your other son asking you a question...
"How do I save something again"
- you've been working with computers longer than I've been alive... click the save button "where" the disk "where" or go to file save "where is file" points "I don't see it" my finger is touching it!!!
- Are you ^(!@#$@ kidding me
- Look at your paper, you've written this down three times
"How do I save something to my zip disk"
- You don't have a zip disk, you have a usb drive or a thumb drive, you've never had a zip disk, I've never had a zip disk, zip disks were stupid and still are and I don't understand why Amazon has them for sale for so much!
"can you print this for me at work"
- no, I've told you this 37 times, go to FedEx office with your usb drive, I'm not printing 173 pages of whatever that is and risk getting fired
I promise you, it's all a con. There's no way she doesn't know exactly what she's doing and just likes messing with me. I've showed her how to turn the volume up and down on her iPhone at least 100 times. You've got 3 buttons, figure it out mom! I swear I'm going to have a stroke or a heart attack one of these days while showing her how to do something for the 97th time.
My brother on the other hand... when he still lived close it felt like every other week I was reinstalling windows for him. He'd torrent everything, click any link, open ever attachment... eventually I just blocked obscene numbers of domains and ran him through a 'family safe' DNS filter. I don't know what he does now, I guess his teenage step son has to suffer through helping him.
You want to teach them how to fish, not hand fish to them every time they ask.
Kitboga is great. His tone is not too aggressive or caustic like some other scambaiters. And he is extremely funny. I mean brilliantly funny..
He livestreams on https://twitch.tv/kitboga at least 4 times a week generally...
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
Disclosure: there are many like it, but this one's mine.
The criminals who prey on the elderly using tech scams (I just need your credit card number to deposit the funds) use the same emotional cons and tactics as those who prey on kids (can you help me find my lost puppy) and they ought to be handled the same.
I've found the best way to address this is to deflect the request. Give me your phone number and I'll call you back or let's report the lost puppy to that policeman over there. And, also practice con-like scenarios. Make a game out of it.
What I taught my children can be applied here...
Most people are good. Some people are bad. The problem is that you can't tell which is which by looking. Being very cautious, but optimistic, is the way to go here.
I think there's probably two prongs of attack. Helping them manage their IT and Scam prevention. Scam prevention covers cold calls "from your bank", random letters in the post, people knocking on the door etc. IT competence is supplementary and confidence here helps prevent the former. e.g. If you've installed every toolbar offered to your browser, then a) You shouldn't be in charge of a browser and b) Are more likely to need the help of MS when they call.
Things I've done, in no particular order:
Offered to be their IT support. If in doubt over anything, please call me first. I don't mind, it's how I can be helpful and show gratitude. If I've called them, I've normally got free time, so good time to ask if there's anything they want me to look at whilst I'm here.
Added their machines to my Google One Backup (or whatever your backup solution of choice is with an online family plan). I've tried leaving them with USB drives to plug in and local backup scheduled, but never seems to work out.
Accept some people shouldn't own a PC. Chromebook/ipad provide most of what they need and are relatively sheltered.
Push them towards online services for say email. Yes, they might be used to Thunderbird that you initially set them up with - but de-corrupting local storage, missing emails from that time they accidentally used POP, hooking in AV, anti-spam etc etc. Gmail (or your provider of preference) handles that for you (and you can just use thunderbird with that if you insist - and it will grab mails from that ISP account you mysteriously are attached to).
Education. Quite surprisingly my PC-cautious relative (never messes up, but refuses to embrace) decided to take a "Computer Driving License" course. I was slightly disparaging to be honest, but she found it interesting - and started realizing what she could do. e.g. Address book previously a txt file (kept on a USB stick for security, naturally), made the switch to Excel and mail-merged the envelopes for the Christmas letter.
- I buy them Apple devices. n=4 here, but it really seems when my family (mom, father-in-law, mother-in-law, and older brother who is borderline tech illiterate) made the switch from Android to iOS devices or even PC to Mac, they just had less of an issue with this. It's anecdotal, I am not a diehard Apple fanboy, but take it for what it is.
- I tell them to always close any and all popups. Point blank, carte blanche, doesn't matter how sincere it seems, or if it even is legitimate, just close it. If there's something she ends up not being able to do eventually she just calls me.
My rules for them: 1. If someone calls you from the bank, hang up and call them back from their phone number listed on their website. 2. If a pop-up comes up warning for viruses, call me immediately. 3. If a pop-up comes up warning about governments coming for you, call me immediately. 4. No one on Earth is going to try to give you money for free online.
I've had to answer plenty of calls about online bullshit, but I prefer that than having to try to deal with the Bank after they get scammed.
Recently featured on ProductHunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/phonescreen
Their website: https://www.phonescreen.co
https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/
877-908-3360
AARP puts serious resources into scam prevention. Print the hotline number and tape it up next to their screens and/or land-line phones.
Obviously this doesn't protect them against the complete set of problems but it is quick to implement and keeps me from being the personal security manager of those I care about.
At the end of the day if someone is running a sophisticated phishing scam some savvy people are going to fall for it - I think the name of the game is damage mitigation not prevention. As long as you can mitigate people from losing a life changing amount of money I think you've won here.
I have installed ChromeOS on her laptop, uBlock in Chrome, set router DNS to my own (which filters out spam, malware, ads etc.).
Set an iPhone option to accept only calls from Contacts. I am also going through call lists periodically and block marketing calls etc.
I have also cut the cord on land line.
I happen to be known as a nice sysadmin and therefore people call me so I got a number of stories.
Many of my older friends and relatives are somewhat immune as their technical English just isn't good enough.
I find the persons who call are mostly 25-35 year olds (I had one older acquaintance who taught highly technical subjects at university level who installed various cleaners that were clearly scams to me but I'll leave him out and focus on the telephone tech support scams.)
Most of the cases we've managed to stop somehow. The one were I didn't manage to stop it in time or get the money back was actually a young accountant who got his personal checkings account emptied.
One thing I've noticed is that several of the people who fall for it are surprisingly smart.
In the last case I interviewed the victim for 20 minutes afterwards and what shook me was how she had no recollection of anything between the start of the call and when she was pulling out her second credit card.
This suggests to me that the best scammers are kind of good with something NLP-line or something.
(FTR: I do also pretend to be a victim everytime they call me both to annoy them for my own entertainment and to learn what they do so I have a fair idea of the first part of the scam.)
Inter-networking computers is fraught with danger: criminals are attacking your loved ones.
I think it's time for a reboot of the Internet.
The one we have now looks like Disney Land but acts like a back alley in a bad part of Bangkok (apologies to residents of that city, I mean no disrespect.)
I removed the Flash player from her machine some time ago, because it now seems to be completely obsolete. (I liked Flash in its day, but it's time has passed.)
AARP still requires Flash for one of its online "Safe Driver" courses. So my mom followed the advice in an AARP User Forum and, of course, got a adware malware installed in her browser.
No matter how many times I tell her to never install _anything_ she'll still wants to prove that she is capable of doing things and gets viruses/malware.
She also gets confused by Google ads. She wanted to add AT&T minutes to her pay-as-you-go phone, searched, and clicked on an ad for a third party minutes reseller (which was filled with AT&T logos) and bought it there. It wasn't such a bad deal, but when she calls me about a message she's getting on her flip phone and mentions company names I've never heard of, I can't help her.
If there's really an issue with your device/account/whatever, you'll know about it.
No legitimate business will threaten and cut you off if you don't do what they're asking right now. Your bank wants your business. They won't just cut you off because you didn't verify your social security number. A legitimate institution will bend over backwards to let you make things right, eventually. Not threaten you right now.
But really, being savvy with tech scams is just being savvy with society in general. So the usual anti-aging, keeping your body and brain active advice apply here as well as anywhere.
Otherwise, he basically tells every "seller" to eff off so he probably wouldn't be scammed anyway.
I understand that’s not an option for everyone. But no amount of education, new devices, etc are going to solve this issue past a certain age/cognitive decline.
Has a lovely web interface too.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a blocklist for scams to be included directly as well.
1. Don't act immediately (no matter how urgent matter seems to be).
2. When in doubt, check with someone you trust (and first reaction should be 'doubt').
Beyond that, any of following are worthy of being flagged as scam automatically -
1. Call/email from IRS or any other government agency
2. Easy money offers
3. (unfortunately) Anyone asking for help, specifically involving money, that too urgently
4. Anyone asking for password, SSN, financial record acess
Bottomline is that in online world, start point should be doubt followed by questions which help build your trust.
In addition: their passwords are all shared with me so that when they die or become otherwise incapable I can still manage their affairs.
I started this practice when my stepfather got a fraudulent email pretending to be from me, claiming that I had been arrested in a foreign country and needed him to send a few thousand dollars. He called me, as he was confused about why I left the country without telling anyone, and I straightened him out.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw/vid...
I recently got a PC for my youngest because some games he wants to play around't available on OSX. I was amazed, virtually every site and app is constantly trying to trick him into signing up, downloading, or changing security settings. PC's are bad news.
a couple of weeks ago, so I told them to call me before they make any technical purchase/decision.
Still worried though when their SIM cards got cloned. (banks use cell OTP for 2fa)
Workes as a universal solution. Don’t remember where I learned it.
No one asks for your credit card numbers through phone. Every one has a payment gateway now a days
Get a Logitech external keyboard for it.
I'm not just talking tech scammers. It's just harder to "mess up" the ipad for anyone.
Is there a cellphone equivalent?
Or an easy-to-manage whitelist?
Not a primary solution, but definitely a secondary safeguard.
