Elderly individuals are more likely to be targeted by online financial fraud and also lose a higher amount than average. Cybercrimes against the elderly have increased 5x since 2014 and cost more than $650 million in losses per year. A new study suggests changes to how the FBI collects information and responds to online crimes targeting elderly and provides suggestions for those living on bank balances, pensions and retirement funds to better protect their assets from online frauds. The study showed older adults were more tech savvy than expected, but they had problems with FBI forms that require victims of scams to report their experiences online. The forms timed out too fast and didn’t allow participants to upload screenshots of conversations (something the older adults preferred). They also felt embarrassed to report- they didn’t want to bother family members or sound like they didn’t understand the technology.
Some preventative measures that are helpful to seniors:
- Different passwords for each site, but if they can’t remember them, it’s safer to have different passwords written down in a drawer than the same password across all the sites.
- Only enter sensitive infoformation on “secure” websites
- Log out of accounts on shared computers
- Use VPNs when using public Wi-Fi
- Report online scams
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