Scams targeting seniors have become increasingly common, and your insights are invaluable in helping us raise awareness and provide better protection and awareness. This survey aims to learn more about personal experiences, familiarity with scams, and interest in fraud prevention. Your responses will help guide efforts to educate and protect older adults from these harmful schemes. Whether you’ve encountered scams firsthand or want to learn more, your feedback will help us raise awareness, empower individuals, and protect our communities from common scams.
Telephone scams are easy to thwart, simply don’t pick up. If it’s legit, they’ll leave a message. My experience, they never do, then block the number. Seniors are supposed to be savy.
my philosophy is simple: If a number is not on my contact list I don’t answer it. If I didn’t request an email or the sender is not in my contact list I DELETE IT. If I get something in the mail I didn’t request, I shred it and trash it. My wife says I am paranoid, I think it’s just common since.
I get email scams daily from somewhere and some are really slick to try to get information. I found that if you look at the senders address you can pretty well tell it is bogus or a scam. Those scam email address’s do not make sense as a legit address does, be sure to get in a habit of looking at those first.
Because I do consulting and have a business, I answer all calls. I am very adept at hanging up after a couple of non sensical words from the caller.
Best story was I used to get calls all of the time for extended car warranties. On the last call that I received, the caller asked what brand of car I had. I told him a Ford. Next question, what year. Answer, ’12. Next question was what model. Answer Model T. Caller, “I can not find that model. He asked again year, I said 1912. Frustrated next question was what do I have as a daily driver. My answer, ’13 Buick. Model? My answer Model 31. Can’t find that model, what year? I said 1913. Caller hung up and have not had any calls since then on extended car warranties.
Michael J is absolutely correct. If you answer a call that you do not know who it is calling, you have 50 percent chance of getting scammed. Also, the longer you talk, the greater the chances.
I get so many spam calls I turned off the ringtone for all calls from numbers not in my contacts.
To those who answer unsolicited calls, STOP! Strangers are NOT your friends.
My late elderly mother loved to pick up every phone call, even though I asked her to let the answering machine get it first. If she recognized the caller, she could pick up the phone.
Her computer was hacked twice when she clicked on a notification or called the phone number on the screen. I wasn’t home when these happened, and I had to hire a computer specialist to fix the problems. One guy even got into her investment account online but was not able to steal anything.
Maybe Elon Musk can help with this one, too.
The majority are hip to it; seniors are wise but so many are looking for that ‘ little extra ‘ in their life…. For Us all, think before you leap.
No one should be scammed; Seniors should Never be scammed, scammers should be Heavily fined, penalized and or imprisoned for numerous attacks . School ’em