Old People and Computers

A fair number of my residential clients are older folks who didn't grow up with or use computers in their earlier years. And sadly, I've witnessed the cognitive decline of some of my older clients, people for whom I've worked for many years. They were competent enough years ago when our working relationship began, but I've witnessed declines as the years passed.

We as a first-world society are in an interesting and fairly new place right now with respect to computing devices, the critical importance they serve in life today, and the unfettered inbound and outbound access they facilitate. Never before was such a strange, unintuitive, and utterly inscrutable device in pretty much every home and also had the power to materially affect ones well-being.

Think of everything people do on a computer: Banking, email, social networking, research, playing games, job hunting, meeting people to date, the list goes on. Older folks do a lot of these things, too. But as cognition declines, the risk to older people from online fraud or just simply the inability to navigate the increasingly complex online waters grows substantially.

Self-Serve at Your Service

So many aspects of life today is self-service now. A lot of it is for the better, but not all of it.

Simple process, unskilled manual tasks were the first things to transition to self-service.

• Pumping gasoline
• Coin-operated laundromats
• Vending machines for single, simple product dispensing, like snacks, soft drinks, and cigarettes (which is no longer common)
• Cafeteria where patrons choose foods and place them on a tray then find their own seating

Retail self checkout ranges from simple to complex and frustrating, and remains today a vexing problem for retailers and the manufacturers of self-check kiosks. But all that pales compared to the wholesale shift underway to what is essentially self-service by moving so many critical life administrative duties online.

Inconsistent interfaces, ambiguous wording, useless help screens, loading errors, and login problems are all sad features of many websites that we're forced to deal with today. And that's for people who aren't experiencing declining cognition or have other conditions that limit accessibility to these online systems.

Now just imagine how bad it is for people that do have declining cognition or other limiting conditions.

With every passing year, our online world grows more complicated and, increasingly, becomes the only way we can do many of the things we used to offline. We've passed the Rubicon where there will be no option to do some critically important things any other way but online.

This is becoming a generational crisis for older people who are finding it increasingly difficult to use a computer or smartphone and who don't have someone in their lives to help them. Not everyone has kids they can call, reliable or otherwise.

Examples of things that we all need to do:

• Banking: Paying bills, verifying deposits, examining our statements for signs of fraud
• Healthcare: Keeping on top of our medical records, lab results, scheduling appointments, messaging with doctors,
• Insurance: All manner of insurance products are handled online: viewing policies, purchasing coverage, filing claims
• Warranties: Filing warranty claims for a household appliance defect, assistance
• Government: Filing taxes, renewing licenses, requesting records, applying for benefits
• Travel: Booking flights, hotels, and rental cars. Keeping tracks of important documents
• Utilities: Starting or stopping service, monitoring usage, paying bills, requesting repairs
• Legal/Financial: Signing contracts, storing records, managing wills and directives

Even today, some of these things can only be performed online. As time marches on, more and more of these and other important personal administrative tasks will be accessible only online. Options for doing these things by visiting in person, by telephone, or by mail are shrinking and disappearing.

For older people, or anyone for that matter, who cannot use a computer or smartphone are at a serious disadvantage. Society today simply does not accommodate these folks as it once did.

Online Fraud

The old are far more likely to be duped by bad actors operating online or by phone. Such cons take many forms. They may appear as any of the following and this is by no means exhaustive. There's no limit to the imagination of these scammers.

• While closing on a new home, you receive an email saying that wiring instructions have changed. This is a biggie.
• A technician from Microsoft, Dell, Norton, or whoever warning about a virus
• A foreign official with grave news about a loved one being arrested
• A friend who is traveling and lost all their luggage, passport, and money
• An officer of the court with bail instructions
• A person on a dating site that is showing interest and wants to develop a friendship
• A banking official who warns that an account is being hijacked and needs to verify some information to help prevent theft
• An IRS agent warning that taxes are due or even that a refund is coming and needs banking information to process
• The prince or deposed king has millions in assets and he needs help transferring it from his country, this is an oldie but goodie
• A lottery official offering congratulations on a big win but just needs fees and taxes paid in order to process the winnings
• A notification of a contest win for some valuable prize like a TV, car, etc. and banking details are needed to process
• Shipping notifications from the Post Office, UPS, Fedex, etc., advising that a parcel could not be delivered and to click a link to claim
• Requesting donations for a major disaster relief effort somewhere
• Email saying you've won a cruise or other vacation
• Email warning that you missed jury duty and must pay a fine to avoid arrest
• Notification that fraud was detected and reversed and needs to you verify that
• In-person delivery of a gift basket, wine, flowers, etc. and the driver needs to process your credit card to confirm your identity.
• and many more...

To be sure, plenty of younger folks fall for these scams as well, but older folks are more heavily targeted. They're more susceptible as they tend to be more trusting, perhaps lonely, they generally have more money, and may suffer from declining cognition. It's a perfect storm for abuse.

Many of these scams are delivered over the computer through email or social networks in addition to the telephone.

There's an excellent line from the 1987 David Mamet movie House of Games where the main character, Mike, a smooth-talking grifter, was explaining the heart of the con to another person: "It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine." Con men give you their trust. That's the hook! Being offered someone's trust is a powerful feeling of self worth and it's human nature to return it. This movie is a must-see, by the way.

Just as many older people reach the day when they can no longer safely operate a motor vehicle or live alone, so too may they reach a day when the computer is too unsafe. Or at the very least too complicated to use. In the case of the latter, perhaps an iPad with it's somewhat-reduced functionality and simpler interface might be a good alternative.

An iPad can help. A big advantage is that it's simpler to use, can be locked down in ways that a regular laptop or tower computer cannot be, it's highly portable for easy use all over the home, and far less likely to have technical problems that a senior could never fix.

Preventative Measures

If you have an older loved one in your life that you are worried about there's a few things you can do:

Email Shadowing

Ask your the older person for their email password (and explain what you want to do) and regularly check their email for any sign of scams. Look in the inbox for scammy email -- and the sent folder as well to see if they responded to any scams. Simply delete any scammy email you see in the inbox. If you see a reply in the sent box, contact the older person immediately. I recommend converting them to Gmail as their spam and scam filters work very well. If you don't want to constantly log into their email, you may be able to set up a forwarding rule that sends you a copy of everything they receive. Gmail allows this.

Another suggestion: Create a brand new Gmail account for your older person and give that new email address to family and friends. Why? Older email accounts that have been in use for many years, especially on less robust services like AOL, Yahoo, or the ISPs free email, tend to attract a lot of spam and scams and do little to filter them out. By setting up a new, fresh email account, there will be no incoming spam or scams, at least for a good while.

I strongly recommend using Gmail. It has the best spam/scam filtering and forwarding tools that help you monitor their inbox. If you do this, be sure to update the email address on all the their websites that require an account, such as their bank.

Many older people, most especially those experiencing cognitive decline, have a contracting circle of friends with whom they communicate. Setting up this new email account should not post a burden.

Telephone Policy

Advise your older person to hang up on absolutely anyone who calls that they don't personally know and to report that call to you. You can decide if there's any merit to the call. e.g. Maybe it really is their bank. If so, you can call and get the details. You might consider changing their phone number to a fresh number then give that number to important people. Most long-time phone numbers that are associated to older people get a ton of targeted fraud calls and telemarketing.

There are also ways to prevent robocallers from getting through.

Banking

Have your older person add you to their accounts so you can monitor them for any suspicious activity. Talk to the bank to see if you can disable outbound wire transfers. There's no reason they need to wire out money. Or set it up where both you and the account holder must visit the bank in person to perform a wire transfer.

See if you can "demote" the older person's account access, limiting their ability to clean out the account on the orders of a scammer. Ask about automatic alerts that can warn you if too much money is attempting to leave the account in a short time or to oddball online merchants. These are all signs of a scam. If the bank won't help, threaten to change banks to one that will. This sort of pressure will eventually force banks to offer more effective anti-fraud services to their older clientele. A small community bank or credit union is often more likely to help than a giant monster megabank (as Clark Howard loves to say).

Guardianship

If your older person is pretty far along the road of cognitive decline to the point they are a danger to themselves physically or financially, then you can ask the court for guardianship. This may sound drastic but may be necessary to legally protect their well-being

Many older people fiercely cling to independence and resist family involvement, often because they do not recognize or acknowledge their own impairment. As a court-appointed guardian, you are a legally obligated fiduciary, empowered to act in the person's best interest even when they disagree. At that stage, the goal is not preserving autonomy at all costs, but preventing irreversible harm.

The November 2015 issue of Consumer Reports magazine has a feature article on this topic entitled "A Crying Shame: Seniors and their families lose $3 billion a year to con artists. What can we do to stop them?" That's a pretty old article by now and the loss figures are higher. But the article is still salient.

Snail Mail

Nearly every entity that people do business with would much rather not mail physical documents. They'd much prefer you receive all that via email or by logging into their web portal. For people that are computer competent, that's fine.

But if your older person is becoming less computer proficient then make arrangements to have bank statements, bills, mortgage statements, tax and insurance information, and anything else possible, physically mailed to the person instead. You know, how it was back in the day. Some of these entities may flat out refuse. Others may charge a fee for doing so. And still others may be legally required to comply if requested.

The beauty with paper documents that come in the mail is no more issues logging in, no having to navigate incoherent user interfaces that are different for every site, reduced opportunity for fraud (see next section), and is immune to computer problems. What's not to like?

Final Comments

Not all old people are infirm! Lots of people make it to a ripe old age with minor to no life-altering cognitive decline. These folks might benefit from hearing anti-fraud reminders just as all of us would but don't necessarily need any special mitigative attention.

But older people, or heck anyone, experiencing irreversible and advancing cognitive decline, could benefit from these measures.