Ask HN: Anyone working on tech to reduce the chance of elder financial scams?
"Who falls for this stuff?" we tech-literate folks often ask, but in retrospect my father was a good target as my mother had always handled the finances and she passed away a few months prior. So we've got a financially-naive person who is also perhaps just starting to become mentally diminished and he goes along with the scam.
More recently a friend's parents of a similar age fell for the "your kid is in jail, you need to give us money for bail" scam.
Just today there was a CNN story about dementia patients repeatedly giving to political groups: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/10/politics/political-fundraising-elderly-election-invs-dg/
The FBI says there's over $3 billion in annual elder fraud losses, and I'd imagine that's under-reported after seeing the shame and reluctance to talk about it that my father experienced.
Are there any existing or emerging tech solutions to any of this? I didn't act until it was too late for my father to be victimized, but my mother-in-law is younger and still sharp. Is there anything we should recommend that she put in place on her accounts before the inevitable decline? Some sort of AI transaction filter that would add safety but also preserve her dignity and autonomy?