Phone/Email/Mail Scams and Seniors

I will say that some of the unsolicited emails, particularly from what appears to be know sites you have delt with are hard to bypass. Hovering over the address is so very helpful. Do many have Gmail and other unknown addresses, NOT real company addresses.

I do forward them on to report to the real sites. Hopefully they get enough to investigate. No sure I would suggest that to your mom though...

Elderly person here...we are so old we have a land line.

We let all calls go to the answering machine. 99% of the scammers hang up and do not leave a message. The rare ones who do leave a message are easily deleted.

I don't want my cell phone to receive spam calls so I share that number only with friends or family.

Do you have an Area Agency on Aging or Senior Center in her area? Many offer seminars on scammers and fraud and maybe if she hears it from them and not you it may be more helpful. My 81 yo Mom won't let the calls go to voice mail because she gets joy out of telling the people F*ck You! I hate it because they now know she will answer the phone.

Get a financial POA and put all her bills on autopay and give her access to a small account with a small amount of money each month that she could "afford" to lose, with a debit card. Or do a pre-paid credit card with a limit.

Take away all other cards and checks (no one needs checks). Get her a tracphone and uninstall the land line as they are really nothing but a hotline for scammers and telemarketers and she can't seem to resist answering.

Or, adjust to the idea that she's going to fall prey to a scam at some point since she continues to engage and can't seem to realize it.

I'm glad my MIL is pretty savvy about this stuff. She just turned 80 and has all her faculties but if I thought she was about to lose everything to scammers I'd be pursuing the above steps.

That's pretty drastic. OP really can't do that in her own, her mom would have to agree.

And I DO need checks. I write two a month. One to the gas company because I refuse to pay their 'fee' for online payments. They provide the envelope and add the stamp.
I also write a check for my rent. Their online fee is just short of $20.00. That is highway robbery!!

Zee
And how would I pay?

My dad is savvy, but I worry about the dopey shit my mom will do when my dad passes. I send my mom articles about all the ways scammers will try to take her money, and hope she reads them. This is definitely something my siblings and I need to discuss and work out a plan for before my dad passes.

As a senior, here is what I do:

1) Think about getting rid of the landline phone if you have not already done so. This eliminates a LOT of calls. I was hesitant to get rid of mine, but honestly, I have not missed it one bit.

2) I do not answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number. The caller can leave a voicemail. This avoids a lot of problems, because often they hang up without leaving a message.

3) Regarding emails, if you get one that looks funny or has a lot of spelling errors, don’t put it in the trash. Put it in junk. If an email tells me that I have won a prize, or UPS needs information from me to deliver a package, I immediately junk it.

4) Also regarding email, if an email tells me that I owe money, or that a payment is late, I do not respond. I do NOT use any phone numbers that are in the email. Instead, I look up the phone number of the company myself and call them.

So basically, do not respond directly either by phone or email to scammers. Find the phone number of whatever company they mention and call that company yourself.



ETA: Here is another thing that I do. I set up a lot of my payments to be paid automatically. If you have not introduced your parents to automatic bill pay, why not? You can show them how to navigate online banking, and set up recurring automatic payments for them. I love it. It’s not for everyone, but nowadays checks are being stolen in the mail frequently. It’s something to think about.


I suspect that it is hard for many of you to help your parents because you know a lot about how computers, emails, etc work, and your parents probably do not. But many of them can learn; they just have to be shown step by step.

I use checks all the time to add money to my kids' lunch account at school, because if you use the online option there's a transaction fee.  My hair stylist prefers a check so she won't have to pay for the additional credit card fee for her transaction.  To pay my vehicle license renewal online vs. check is another additional fee.  So yes, some people still use checks. Oh, and several months before my mom passed, while visiting, she had me drop off a check for her water bill because she didn't want to pay fees for online.

I didn't say NO ONE EVER USES CHECKS.
I said you don't HAVE to, you just want to avoid a fee.

Billpay sends checks for me, for free, to places like the doctor's office or whatever. Is that not an option for you?

Never mind, I see people want to keep writing checks. Whatever!

you said no one needs checks, which yes, people do need checks to avoid fees.

This has been an ongoing thing with my mother, who both gets paranoid about legitimate things (she paid her rent in cash last year because of paranoia) and unquestioning about things she should question (she got moderately scammed buying a car a few months ago, which I posted about on here). It's hard to watch, and I've just had to accept that my options are to go to court and get power of attorney or that at some point she might end up in financial peril, because she is definitely not taking any help from me about it. I am sorry you are dealing with it. I have encouraged my mother to go to classes at the local senior center, which they seem to have, that cover things like computer and email savviness, but so far she has been unwilling; maybe you'd have better luck.