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I had "The Talk" with my parents, 82 and 79 respectively. They were surprised to learn about it, but they seemed to basically get it. They nodded. I said "what

I had "The Talk" with my parents, 82 and 79 respectively. They were surprised to learn about it, but they seemed to basically get it. They nodded. I said "what happens if you get a text message from your bank with a link to a webpage?" and they said "never click the link, go to the bank website and look for an alert, then call up the bank if I can't find it there". And so on. Great, that's that worry taken care of. Not even one month later my mom spent an hour on the phone with a scammer before my dad finally got suspicious and made her hang up. I still have no idea what all they had her do, and she doesn't remember either. We had to basically treat it as a successful identify theft and potential intrusion into her device, even though she didn't actually give them any money, thankfully. So, I don't know if The Talk actually does it. For her, it was the fact that there was another person on the line (people wouldn't lie to you, obviously) and that this person was telling her they'd get in trouble if she didn't go through these steps with them. The scammers are cynical experts, they're way more sophisticated than the median elderly person they're fucking with. This all made me very scared for them, because I don't even know if this single incident will be enough to make them sufficiently canny.

ryandrake 3y ago
Yea it’s not perfect but it’s at least one step. Sadly, older people maybe just grew up in a more trusting US society, and are therefore more trusting themselves. If someone calls them up and says “hi, I’m Jim, from the County courthouse, and I wanted to discuss a matter with you,” heck they might by default believe him! It sounds ludicrous to you or I but their minds are from a different era. “Telephone calls are an expensive, special thing” their 1950s mind thinks, “surely he wouldn’t call unless it was a real thing and important!” I don’t even answer the phone to begin with. Everything goes to voicemail. If it’s important, they will leave a message, and I can determine later whether they are to be believed.
- vundercind 3y ago
  > Sadly, older people maybe just grew up in a more trusting US society, and are therefore more trusting themselves > It sounds ludicrous to you or I but their minds are from a different era. “Telephone calls are an expensive, special thing” their 1950s mind thinks This is the key—grew up in a world where people often weren't around their phone to answer it immediately (the older ones, maybe a world in which not everyone even had a phone!) and it cost money to make long distance calls, so mass-call scams had trouble being profitable. I mean, hell, that's only not been the state of things for a relatively short time. I was still paying connection and per-minute fees for long distance calls until at least the mid '00s. I think it's seriously worth considering whether we need some more cost-friction on long distance connections. That'd be a pretty elegant way to curb this, since nobody seems willing to just force the telecoms to fix it directly.
- jmull 3y ago
  I’ve got to say, this is pretty cringy and more than a little naive. Of course there are old people falling for scams — dementia is a lot more prevalent and they tend to have retirement accounts — but younger people are vulnerable too. Pig butchering often has a crypto component, a scam that appeals much more to younger people. I googled for demographics on this and came up with this: https://www.globalantiscam.org/post/statistics-of-crypto-romance-pig-butchering-scam https://www.globalantiscam.org/post/statistics-of-crypto-rom... Looks like everybody needs “the talk”.

ryandrake 3y ago

Yea it’s not perfect but it’s at least one step. Sadly, older people maybe just grew up in a more trusting US society, and are therefore more trusting themselves. If someone calls them up and says “hi, I’m Jim, from the County courthouse, and I wanted to discuss a matter with you,” heck they might by default believe him! It sounds ludicrous to you or I but their minds are from a different era. “Telephone calls are an expensive, special thing” their 1950s mind thinks, “surely he wouldn’t call unless it was a real thing and important!” I don’t even answer the phone to begin with. Everything goes to voicemail. If it’s important, they will leave a message, and I can determine later whether they are to be believed.

vundercind 3y ago
> Sadly, older people maybe just grew up in a more trusting US society, and are therefore more trusting themselves > It sounds ludicrous to you or I but their minds are from a different era. “Telephone calls are an expensive, special thing” their 1950s mind thinks This is the key—grew up in a world where people often weren't around their phone to answer it immediately (the older ones, maybe a world in which not everyone even had a phone!) and it cost money to make long distance calls, so mass-call scams had trouble being profitable. I mean, hell, that's only not been the state of things for a relatively short time. I was still paying connection and per-minute fees for long distance calls until at least the mid '00s. I think it's seriously worth considering whether we need some more cost-friction on long distance connections. That'd be a pretty elegant way to curb this, since nobody seems willing to just force the telecoms to fix it directly.
jmull 3y ago
I’ve got to say, this is pretty cringy and more than a little naive. Of course there are old people falling for scams — dementia is a lot more prevalent and they tend to have retirement accounts — but younger people are vulnerable too. Pig butchering often has a crypto component, a scam that appeals much more to younger people. I googled for demographics on this and came up with this: https://www.globalantiscam.org/post/statistics-of-crypto-romance-pig-butchering-scam https://www.globalantiscam.org/post/statistics-of-crypto-rom... Looks like everybody needs “the talk”.