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Comment by thrownaway954 | Hacker News Reader

simple... they call me first.

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.

_noone_ should feel scared of being ridicule when asking any question regarding their safety or well-being.

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It's all good until they don't realize the thing that is happening is something they should call about.

You'll sit down to talk to your parents someday and the damage will already be done.

The scammers are fast. They are good. They are like vultures hovering over the elderly. Our parents don't see this stuff coming, and they comply too quickly.

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.

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't exist. It goes on and on and on and on.

Yeah this doesn't really sound like a strategy for preventing them from getting scammed

You can't prevent everything :(

a lot of the situations you described are targeted at people with dementia and other neurological disorders. there really isn't anything you can do in those cases.

thankfully my parent have their wits and don't suffer from such disorders.

It can also happen quickly with isolated parents if they're at a transition point (still living home) and a scammer walks in. I had a friend who'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.

When I visit relatives in the hospital there is no one stopping/verifying/questioning me. At all. No checks, no questions, nothing. If you act like you know where you are going no one worries enough to stop you. It has left me feeling concerned each time, especially when it is a younger relative in the hospital.

Definitely. But it may be enough depending on your parents, I think for now it's enough for my mother for example. And the title question is "How do you protect your parents?" not "How, hypothetically, should everybody's parents be protected?"

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'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.

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'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.

Scammers can definitely be fast. My grandfather was scammed recently. He got a phone call claiming to be some sort of technical support for the retirement community he was living in. Eventually he figured out he was being scammed, hung up, and called me.

Unfortunately, because it had happened so quickly he didn't remember everything the scammer had asked him to do. So it took quite a bit of searching until we figured it out.

> simple... they call me first.

This… seems a bit naive to think your parents will call you first every single time they want to do something special with their computer. It makes me think of parents that assume their teenagers aren't doing anything stupid because they are confident the kids are sharing everything with them.

Anectode: My in-laws are renting their property through Internet. They occasionally receive calls by interested renters and they successfully manage it by themselves. They are almost in their 70's. One day someone had a payment issue and asked to pay them differently, asking for account information so they could send the money directly. They managed to trick them into putting their card number on a fake website displaying the agreed-upon amount. They lost about 100€, the bank couldn't revert the transaction for some reason.

Parents only call you when they are unsure of something. The problem is when the scammer manage to convince them everything is normal, which is exactly what they are good at.

if you think it's naive for your users or loved ones to call you when they have the slightness doubt about something, then perhaps the problem is with how they feel treated or the way you present yourself to them when need help? are you welcoming to their questions or do you act annoyed with them?

> Parents only call you when they are unsure of something. The problem is when the scammer manage to convince them everything is normal, which is exactly what they are good at.

> if you think it's naive for your users or loved ones to call you when they have the slightness doubt about something...

I think you just affirmed their point. You're acknowledging they only call when they have even the slightest doubt. They're saying that is exactly the problem, because they won't call when they have no doubt that everything is normal.

Since your mention euros: I am sure you know that cc transactions are protected in the EU and that you cannot be held accountable above 200 or 250€ (don't remember, this changed recently) when the transaction is fraudulent.

I know you said 100€, but I do not belive a bank will make the claim. I was in that situation twice, the first time they did not even mention it, and the other time they did mention it. When I asked "and so what" they said that they just informed me of that but they they will, of course, not make the claim.

Same here. My 79-yr-old mother is far from sophisticated about tech stuff but understands the basic idea of scams, and is naturally inclined to assume people are out to get something from her. So when she gets suspicious calls or letters (she doesn’t follow her email that closely), she calls me. Sometimes she will try to engage with the scammers, which I’ve tried to tell here is counter-productive.

_noone_ should feel scared of being ridicule when asking any question regarding their safety or well-being.

In 2020, does this mean anything online anymore? Or does it mean more than ever? I've gotten to the point where a -50 karma is just a momentary annoyance, and I just think of it as "imaginary Internet points."

I could see how a kid who was conditioned to see their self-value in karma or views might take it hard. I've certainly been in that boat. Has there been a peak, then decline in online social media cynicism, like there was with child computer literacy? (Went up, peaked, then went down.) (Thankfully, my parents have always been extreme social media cynics.)

This is how I approach it at work (a non-profit where we deal with sensitive data). Every new employee and volunteer goes through a 30-minute training webinar on security when they start: spotting phishing emails, choosing good passwords, 2FA etc.

At the end, I tell them that if something just feels off, even if they can't figure out why, I'd rather they call or message me on Slack than ignore it. It absolutely never bothers me when they do it - in fact, it makes me feel better. Maybe 1% of reports are actual issues, but I'd rather deal with 99% false positives than miss even one thing.

I’ve seen the kind of videos that FAANGs require their new employees to watch. Not good. Even scarily bad.

If you are at a FAANG, then the phish success rate against your company is probably in the mid single digit percentages.

If you’re at a Fortune 50 company, then the phish success rate against your company is most likely in the high single digit percentage range — if you’re lucky.

If you’re at a company not big enough to be in the Fortune 50, then the phish success rate at your company is most likely in the double digit percentage range. That’s right, over 10% of all phishing messages sent to people in your company will end up hooking their targets.

And the sad thing is that we techies are the ones that are supposed to be most aware of these things and most likely to be able to protect against them.

I think this is the key. As a kid, I remember family member of mine would routinely take their computer into friends at their company's IT department (their personal computer, mind you) because they felt less embarrassed asking a coworker for help than their kids. I try to make sure my parents don't feel awkward or embarrassed for asking me with tech help.

> 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.

A friends parent got done by a phone scam. "Your router has been compromised, please let us check your PC, oh no they've got the computer, install this. Oh no - they've hacked your bank account and used it to Launder money, the fraud office will contact you. etc etc. The bank saved them when they tried to move a second load of money.

I don't believe for a moment they didn't contact anyone because of a fear of being laughed at - they believed the narrative that this was a secret operation. Ironically it had all the hallmarks of a classic eve online scam.

Do not assume all scammers are mediocre and transparent. Do not assume a close personal relationship is enough.

Which eve scam you are referring to?

This is not the best advice when your 90 year old father loves using his Mac and iPhone, and is constantly "fixing" things when something "didn't work"

Scammers have ways around that as well. My father called me once asking about malware, he also mentioned that they actually placed a timer, applying pressure that he supposed to respond within 2 minutes. There are a lot of tricks those scammers are using.

^ This.

My parents ring me if they get an odd popup on a webpage to double check if they should ignore it or not. If someone calls them telling them there's something wrong they politely tell the person they will ask me to look at it and politely end the call. And if they purchase stuff off a new website they check with me before they make any purchase so they don't pass their credit card to a dodgy site.

It's better they call and ask me than take a risk, last thing I want to happen is my parents to fall victim to a scam.

i will say that i also install and configure ublock origin on all the browsers that i and my parents use. it's surprising how many times, just innocent web browsing gets you in trouble cause of ads and drive by malware.

+1 for ad blockers - installing one (I use uBo as well) on the computers I "manage" must've saved my relatives 100s of € in falling for scams. I'm sure of this, because a month ago Facebook pushed a bypass for ad blockers and within days, one of my relatives almost lost 300€. What saved her was her poor understanding of English - she called me to translate something for her and I immediately smelled a scam.

Good point.

What if the scammer plot "do not call your kids" into their scheme?

Then it's an obvious red flag if the parents know to always call, no matter what!

Yes, when the scheme is simple and straightforward, there is no point to say "do not call your children". But within a little bit sophisticated schemes, scammers can find a reason to plot in this kind of demand. Such as your computer has been compromised by terrorist organization, do not call anyone especially your children.

it should be second nature to ask for help for something you don't understand or feel uncomfortable with. my parents and friends would literally say that they need to consult with their tech guy, that's me :), to make sure everything is alright. they would know something is wrong with the situation right away if they were told not to talk to me by the person.

and that really goes for _ANY_ situation in life. if you are told _not_ to talk to someone else about a situation, you are being controlled and taken advantage of.

I've watched some of Kitboga's streams on Twitch and you are correct. They will not same do not call your children, but they will say they need them to stay on the line over the duration of the call. In fact, if you do get disconnected, they are very quick to call back.

Then it's 99.9999% safe to ignore. There is no reason that calling someone else would be a problem for anything that is legitimate.

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