<story><title>Ask HN: How do you protect your parents from tech scammers?</title><text>My dad recently received a call from “Windows support”. He figured out it was a scam call and so luckily no further harm came from it. However, how do you protect your parents from similar tech scams - short of locking down their computers with parental controls?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>dpcan</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s all good until they don&amp;#x27;t realize the thing that is happening is something they should call about.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;ll sit down to talk to your parents someday and the damage will already be done.&lt;p&gt;The scammers are fast. They are good. They are like vultures hovering over the elderly. Our parents don&amp;#x27;t see this stuff coming, and they comply too quickly.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t exist. It goes on and on and on and on.</text></item><item><author>thrownaway954</author><text>simple... they call me first.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;_noone_ should feel scared of being ridicule when asking any question regarding their safety or well-being.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tialaramex</author><text>Definitely. But it may be enough depending on your parents, I think for now it&amp;#x27;s enough for my mother for example. And the title question is &amp;quot;How do you protect your parents?&amp;quot; not &amp;quot;How, hypothetically, should everybody&amp;#x27;s parents be protected?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: How do you protect your parents from tech scammers?</title><text>My dad recently received a call from “Windows support”. He figured out it was a scam call and so luckily no further harm came from it. However, how do you protect your parents from similar tech scams - short of locking down their computers with parental controls?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>dpcan</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s all good until they don&amp;#x27;t realize the thing that is happening is something they should call about.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;ll sit down to talk to your parents someday and the damage will already be done.&lt;p&gt;The scammers are fast. They are good. They are like vultures hovering over the elderly. Our parents don&amp;#x27;t see this stuff coming, and they comply too quickly.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t exist. It goes on and on and on and on.</text></item><item><author>thrownaway954</author><text>simple... they call me first.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;_noone_ should feel scared of being ridicule when asking any question regarding their safety or well-being.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aswanson</author><text>It can also happen quickly with isolated parents if they&amp;#x27;re at a transition point (still living home) and a scammer walks in. I had a friend who&amp;#x27;s father was starting to suffer from dementia and had a woman who got control of some of his bank account info and was emptying him out. After my friend had his dad hospitalized, she was calling the hospital trying to get access to him and he had to get his room changed to an alias. Hospitals have frighteningly poor security measures.</text></comment>