by
Block Party
June 20, 2024
Romance schemes, sweepstakes, voice cloning — the list of methods scammers devise to take advantage of vulnerable people online and through social media is constantly growing. Con artists often prey on older adults; they assume seniors are less tech-savvy, more trusting, and less likely to report being scammed to the authorities.
According to estimates from the Government Accountability Office, older Americans lose $2.9 billion because of financial fraud every year — and that figure doesn’t account for the overwhelming majority that go unreported, whether due to embarrassment or lack of knowledge about how to report fraud.
There’s several steps you can take to keep older parents safe. Follow our advice to help your loved ones reduce their risk of falling victim to scams.
As the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. Keeping your parents aware of different kinds of scams and common methods used by bad actors before they have reason to worry will help them stay alert.
Facebook and other social media may seem like benign platforms, but they contain lots of personal information that scammers can use against your parents. Check out our guide to staying safe on Facebook for a complete rundown of ways your parents can be targeted on social media — and how they can lock down their personal information and keep themselves safe.
Government agencies such as the IRS or the Social Security Administration will never ask for payments to be made over the phone or by wiring money, and they won’t call you unless you call them first. Also be wary of anyone posing as a Medicare representative asking for account information or personal details. These scam callers may say your parents have unpaid taxes and threaten them with arrest or deportation if they don’t pay immediately, or they may say your parents’ Social Security or Medicare benefits will be cut off if they don’t provide personal information. Unsurprisingly, this information can then be used to commit identity theft.
Even if the caller ID says the name of the agency or the email domain seems legitimate, remind your parents they can always hang up the phone and either check with you or verify the request allegedly being made by these agencies by logging into their online portals. These agencies tend to communicate by mail, and will not have representatives individually send emails to clients or call them directly.
In these scams, your parents will get a call telling them they’ve won a lottery or prize of some kind, and to claim their winnings, they need to send money to cover taxes or processing fees. These scammers may use the name of well-known sweepstakes, such as Publishers Clearing House, to gain trust and confidence.
If someone calls or emails you asking you to wire them money to claim a prize, it’s probably a scam. Remind your parents they can always hang up the phone or forward a sketchy email to you if they want verification. As a general rule of thumb, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
A common robocall is a call from a scammer asking, “Can you hear me?” When someone says yes, the scammer records their voice without their knowing, and hangs up. This recorded voice can be used as a voice signature to authorize charges on stolen credit cards.
Other kinds of calls may claim to be from a company your parents trust or have an account with — like their electric company or Netflix. The caller will ask for personal information, passwords, or financial account information under the guise of customer service. In reality, these calls are scams to collect your parents’ sensitive personal information.
Thanks to a wealth of voice recordings online, scammers can use advanced AI to clone any voice and impersonate you. Your parents may get a phone call from you sounding frantic and scared, telling them that they need to wire $1000 to someone holding you hostage. Of course, you’re in no danger — it’s a scam. These synthetic voices are used for extortion, citing believable personal information available on social media to make your parents pay up. There is often no recourse for these scams, especially if ransoms or fees are paid in cash, through prepaid gift cards, or through a wire transfer.
In one example, known as grandparent scams, a scammer calls a grandparent and says something like "Hi grandpa, do you know who this is?" When your parents guess the name of the grandchild the scammer sounds the most like, the scammer secures their trust and asks for money to solve an urgent financial problem, like overdue rent or car repairs. Often they’ll ask them not to tell anyone and request to be paid through a wire transfer or a gift card. Your parents may never be able to recover the money.
In other versions of this scam, a caller may not claim to be a grandchild but instead a lawyer or arresting police officer. Using urgency and pressure, they play on the emotions of the person they call, telling them they need to send cash quickly. They may send an Uber or courier service to collect the cash. When telling your parents about these scams, remind them that they can always hang up and double-check by calling back their grandchild or giving you a call.
Also known as pig butchering scams, romance scammers make elaborate online profiles on social media with stolen or AI-generated pictures and exploit older people’s loneliness to collect money over time. Sometimes, these scammers are — or say they are — living overseas. They can request money for visas, medical emergencies or travel costs to come to the U.S. These long-term cons get their name from scammers’ intentions to "fatten up" their victims by gaining their trust and manipulating their emotions. Later, scammers "slaughter" them — exploiting them by convincing them to send the scammers money. Pig butcher scammers may find your parents on Facebook or on LinkedIn, where new fake accounts are created faster than LinkedIn can deactivate them — but regardless of the platform they start on, the end result is the same each time. The pig butcher sets up a fake profile and sends a request to connect, gains their target’s trust and moves the conversation over to WhatsApp, continues to engage their target and eventually gets them to send over money in the form of crypto. In 2022, the FTC found nearly 70,000 people reported falling prey to romance scams, with losses near $1.3 billion.
Your parents have spent their entire lives saving for financial security — but false investment scams put their savings at risk. Scammers pose as financial advisors, and may call promising a lucrative investment opportunity. There are different types of investment scams, including but not limited to Ponzi schemes, charitable gift annuities, and illegitimate bonds and certificates of deposit. These scammers will promise high returns with little or no risk involved. Remind your parents that no investment is 100% safe or can guarantee returns, and that they can always hang up and look up a financial advisor’s credentials online if they’re unsure.
Other investment scams can happen on social media platforms like WhatsApp, where scammers offer fake investment opportunities, create urgency, and request money transfers. They do this in group chats with other accounts (which may seem legitimate but are either fake accounts or are also scammers or otherwise in on the scam). These other accounts will chime in with their own testimonials about what a great deal the scammer is offering, and how they’ve personally made money from the investment opportunity. Again: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Consider having your parents use a user-friendly password manager, such as NordPass, 1Password, RoboForm, or Dashlane. These password managers are easier for older adults because they’re relatively intuitive and provide a variety of features they’ll find helpful. Good password managers will keep their logins and sensitive information secure, organized, and accessible only to them (and you or other family members, if they want).
If your parents are stubborn and refuse to use a password manager, teaching them about password hygiene — selecting, managing and maintaining strong passwords — can save you (and them!) a lot of hassle later on. Avoid simple passwords (12345 or “password”) or common identifying information, like their birthdays and kids’ names, and use a different password for each account, if possible.
There are several steps you and your parents can take to make it harder for scammers to get in touch over the phone.
A foolproof way to cut down on the number of spam, telemarketer or sales calls your parents receive is by signing up their cell and home phone numbers for the FTC’s National Do Not Call Registry. Of course, this won’t prevent savvier scammers from getting in touch with them, but you can tell your parents that any sales calls they continue to get are likely for scams.
Your parents’ wireless carrier may offer a service to block spam calls, either for free or for a fee. On a landline, they may be able to block anonymous calls by dialing *77.
When your parents get an urgent call telling them they need to wire money, it can cause stress, and your parents may panic at not having the right words for an emergency situation, or may not immediately hang up if they think it’s rude to do so. Help them come up with a script — it can be as simple as a line they write down and stick on the fridge and read off when they get what they suspect is a scam call and won’t want to hang up abruptly. “I can’t talk right now — I’m making dinner,” or “Sorry, now isn’t a good time” should suffice.
Scams are designed to catch us when we’re vulnerable — and there’s no shame in having it happen. Have your parents keep the phone numbers of relevant resources at hand, including the police, Adult Protective Services, and their bank.
To get contact information for Adult Protective Services near your parents, visit the Eldercare Locator website, a government-sponsored national hotline, or call them at 1-800-677-1116.
You can also report scams online to the FTC. By sharing your experience, you can prevent other people from being scammed.
Installing Block Party is easy. You and your parents can use our browser extension to get recommendations to keep your personal information on your social media accounts safe and away from bad actors online.
