Over 3.5 million older adults were victims of financial abuse in 2022. When it comes to scams and fraudulent activities, the average loss is over $34,000. Your mom lives alone, and you do worry about her falling for a scam. Senior home care providers can step in to help her stay protected from scams.
What can you do to prevent this?
Senior Home Care Marion OH – Ways to Stop Your Mom From Falling for a ScamLimit Social Media
If your mom uses social media to stay in touch with family, go over her privacy settings. Make sure they’re turned to only allow messages from friends. Only friends should be allowed to view her pictures, posts, and information. Do not allow her city/town, phone number, or date of birth to be public. In fact, make up a date of birth for her. Her real birthday doesn’t need to be given.
Help Her Organize Her Mail and Talk to Her Bank
When your mom’s mail arrives, make sure she knows how to discern legitimate bills and invoices from fake ones. If she struggles to sort her mail, arrange to have a caregiver or family member available each week to help her.
Talk to your mom’s bank about setting up a separate account for online purchases. Make sure overdraft protection is turned off. If the account has no money, the charge is declined. This can keep your mom’s other bank accounts from being drained by a scammer.
When she makes a purchase, she should use that special account’s debit or credit card. She can transfer just enough money to cover the purchase.
Set Up Spam Filters on Her Inbox and Make Sure Her Computer, Tablet, or Phone Are Protected
Use spam filters on her email to keep spam from getting through. If she gets a message that has a link to click, teach her never to do that. If there’s an email from her bank saying her loan payment didn’t go through and to click this link, she needs to know the email could be fake.
Instead, she should call her bank or visit their official webpage and log in. She can find important notifications in her messages. If a loan payment didn’t go through, she’ll know by looking at her accounts.
Set up a security suite on your mom’s computer, phone, and tablet. It should be protecting her from malware, viruses, etc. Set it to update daily and run scans regularly.
You also want to keep spam calls from reaching your mom. Some phones, such as a Google Pixel, have built-in answering services that ask any callers not in your mom’s phone contacts to state their reason for calling before the call is allowed to ring through to the phone. This is great for filtering out scam calls.
Arrange Senior Home Care Services
If your mom lives alone and answers the phone to have someone to talk to, make sure she has senior home care services. If she has a caregiver available to help her organize her mail, complete online purchases, and answer the phone.
Sources: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/elderly-financial-scam-statistics.html
If you are considering hiring Senior Home Care Services in Marion OH, call the caring staff at Central Star Home Health at (419) 610-2161.
Providing services for families in Mansfield, Lexington, Bellville, Crestline, Galion, Shelby, Ashland, Ontario, Bucyrus, Mt. Vernon, Marion, Willard, and the surrounding areas.
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