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Or maybe there are more things using the same tactics / scammer's reach keeps increasing.

My parents "fell" for fundamentalism early (as kids - raised in it), for televangelists in their 40s, and Fox News in their 70s/80s. Fox News so recently only because they didn't get it very often until about 10 years ago when they moved into a retirement home (didn't have cable before that).

Right that's why I qualified that with "things they didn't used to fall for".

There’s a long way between perfectly functioning and dementia. I want to say that I hope you never find out, but the twilight of life is tough either way.

"Being at an age" can include having age-related illnesses.

Right but an age-related illness that affects cognition is generally just called dementia.

Normal cognitive decline comes gradually with age to most people. Dementia is more severe, often more sudden, and can be caused by a host of things, from Alzheimer's to brain injury. Regardless, you're not going to take away somebody's computer because their brain isn't quite as sharp as it once was.