Elderly parents - digital life

[Anonymous]

Let’s talk about the sandwich generation and digitally monitoring our children, but also digitally monitoring our elderly parents.

Spent some time with my 80+ dad this weekend and I am realizing how more susceptible he is to so many bad things on the Internet, not content but advertising. And whereas my kids have controls on devices that they can’t spend money without my permission, my dad has hundreds of thousands of dollars and people ***constantly*** advertising to him.

He can’t read an email without being marketed to. His email service includes an in-line ad that looks like an unread email. He kept clicking it.

I could put this under aging parents (or whatever that forum is called).. but thought this discussion might be more general about tech companies, ads. (Shrug, I don’t know - move it there if you want to)

[Anonymous]

I think the dad part belongs in the other forum. it's extremely complicated if he doesn't know he has any issues and once they start falling for fraudsters it's near impossible to get the money back. People will have suggestions of what they found helpful.

For teens post on the teen forum, but it sounds like you have controls already. Do check their texts now and then. As one expert said in a lecture I attended years ago, if you are preparing your child to live in a democracy safely, your home should not be one yet. You need to periodically check while you still can to make sure they aren't making life altering choices (anywhere from sexting photos, to online bullying of an unhappy peer to talking about suicidal thoughts or purchasing drugs online). You absolutely check everything they are putting on public tictok and IG where even if they delete it, if someone saved it, it can back to hurt them. They feel invincible and their frontal lobes don't fully develop until 25ish.

[Anonymous]

I wish I k re. Every week my dad seems to click on some text and then he puts in his credit card and I have to cancel it. It’s worse than a child. Yesterday he was going to buy my kids a ps5 for only $11.95 shipping with his Walmart points. I said you don’t even go to Walmart! He doesn’t drive. I just don’t get it.

[Anonymous]

It’s horrible. My dad falls for everything. We have a contract with IT guy who has to clean his laptop quarterly, and his money is tied up in a trust and he gets a limited amount of cash monthly. Big purchases must be made with trust approval.

[Anonymous]

Install Firefox with uBlock Origin and hide the other browsers on his pc. No ads, not even YT. That's what I did FWIW.

[Anonymous]

I advise clients to share their inboxes and ramp up their security settings.

[Anonymous]

As much as I got frustrated with my mom when I was younger for never learning to use a computer or even a smartphone, I am so grateful for it now. She is 84 with Alzheimer’s and the last thing I need on top of everything else I do for her is to deal with the viruses, financial scams, and other nightmares that can occur when older adults use computers and Internet.