Your point (1) is particularly good and Brian Krebs has a nice mantra that echoes it fairly closely: "Hang up, look up, call back". One small optimization if y

Your point (1) is particularly good and Brian Krebs has a nice mantra that echoes it fairly closely: "Hang up, look up, call back". One small optimization if you can expect likely inbound communications in advance (either on your own behalf or those of your family members): collect the return contact details in an authentic, physical format from the parties you expect to hear from before they need to reach out to you. The typical example here is a debit/credit card: turning that over to look for the financial institution's phone number is straightforward, trustworthy and confidence-building. Sadly because we've allowed shoddy insecure software to become commonplace on smartphones and in browsers (thank you, market incentives), it's becoming -- predictably -- less reasonable to depend upon them when researching and communicating. So, I'd expect, more reliable and less sophisticated devices and environments will increasingly make sense for everyone.