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Comment by cedws | Hacker News Reader

My grandmother has been through the same thing. She was scammed out of all of her savings by accounts impersonating a particular celebrity. Thankfully the bank returned all of the money, but the perpetrators will never be caught, they operate out of Nigeria (one of them attached their phone to her Google account.)

Unfortunately these fake celebrity accounts are swarming her like locusts again. We tried to educate her about not using her real name online, not giving out information or adding unknown people as friends, but there's a very sad possibility that she doesn't fully understand what she's doing.

It was emotionally difficult going through her laptop to gather evidence for the bank. They know exactly how to romance and pull on heart strings, particularly with elderly people.

Meta's platforms are a hive of scammers and they should be held accountable.

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> adding unknown people as friends

The number of my outer circle of friends who fall for the “copied profile” adding of unknown people or accept a friend request from the attractive young woman who somehow is interested in them is shocking. (I’m gauging this from looking at the “mutual friends” in the friend request.)

I'm curious why it seems so many on this site still have Facebook accounts. I'd deleted mine before and it didn't stick, but I deleted it again earlier this year and haven't one single time considered creating another. I see no reason I would need a Facebook account again. I don't care to follow the activity of acquaintances.

Unless you're talking about Instagram? Even then IG has always struck me as the cooler Facebook, but now it's just a doom scrolling machine from what I can tell.

I presume I'm in the minority. But I don't really understand it. I see no need for these services anymore; they seem mostly like Trojan horses to inject advertisements into our lives.

For me it’s groups. Several IRL groups I’m part of (sports/recreation/hobby based) use FB for coordination.

Why can’t you do a power of attorney(?) over her finances or move them into a living trust, etc. seems like there are legal protections out there if you can convince her it’s in her best interest to let her family manage her estate so she can focus on enjoying final years (obviously don’t say it like that)

My friend is a bank manager. He says everyday 2-3 elderly people come in confused about a scam.

This is a silent crisis impacting almost eveyone. My grandma personally had her gold stolen by a scammer.

She is now in a home for dimensia.

It really is a silent crisis. I warn my family constantly about ones targeting elderly, but even people my age fall for others

Children who are not cognitively and emotionally ready for the Internet shouldn't have access to it. Similarly, any elderly folks who are not cognitively able to deal with social media (or the Internet in general) should be cut off from it, too.

You can (and should) have That Talk with your parents about scams on the internet, but if they're still falling for them and not getting the message, maybe it's time to gently steer them off the Internet. We take the car keys away from people who can't handle driving anymore.

I don’t think it’s a silent crisis per se, but just one people ignore.

There’s tons of media about it, tons of people are aware of elder fraud etc but people don’t want to think about the vulnerable of society. There’s been jokes about it and media about it going back decades.

People are aware but solving it requires an uncomfortable level of change in society, training and regulations.

As an aside, both Thelma and The Beekeeper are recent movies about elders being scammed and revenge being taken. Both very different but enjoyable.

Cable media is filled with ads for scams purporting to prevent other scams.

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