The elderly and scams

[Pixie]

My Dad is 84 and is constantly plagued by scam calls even though I've registered his numbers with the Telephone Preference Service. In fact, when I was at his house the other day he got a call (which I answered) from someone supposedly called Michael but who had a very thick foreign accent. He said he was from the Telephone Preference Service and asked if my Dad was still getting nuisance calls. I said yes because I'd reported some to TPS. They asked to speak to my Dad but because of the guy's accent and the amount of background noise I knew my Dad wouldn't be able to hear him so ended the call. I later checked the number on Who Called Me and it's a scam whereby they try to get you to divulge credit card/bank details to pay for membership of TPS (which is free!!!)

He also wanted me to claim a tax refund for him because he'd received a text from HM Revenue which said he was due a refund. I told him it was a scam and his reply was that it said at the top of the text that it was from HM Revenue!!

There are lots of other tales I could recount but it's really worrying. I never thought that my Dad would be so gullible, he certainly never used to be. It's probably just that he doesn't understand the technology.

[MrsD]

Re: The elderly and scams

We have similar problems with our oldies, they get tons of mail, most of it begging letters, we've done everything to expalin it should just go in the bin or even better in the letterbox back to these shysters.

They have now a trucall system for the phone as they were being plagued by calls after a couple of years of gaily flinging their number everywhere, they didn't understand that they should do that, they thought they had to give everyone and his Granny the number,

I work in IT so I am like a maniac about being careful online and on the phone, I work in finance for education so as secure as it gets, and we all got picture of a big willy on our emails a couple of weeks ago, some dopes opened it and the IT Security Manager and his department are still trying to clean some of the accounts up.

You can never ever be too careful with your personal information particularly with the quasi-official dopes like the CRAs.............................................. .

[nanna58]

Re: The elderly and scams

We always think we are ultra careful ,. But who knows. On these scam programmes I can never see myself doing half the things but never say never.Indid talk to one once he asked for my name I said I was Mrs M. Ouse ,funny he hasn't called back.

[nightwatch]

Re: The elderly and scams

good few years back an old lady I knew, was paying out almost all of her pension to Readers Digest, as they kept sending her letters saying she had won £xxxx, i could not get her to understand that she hadn't won, she had to enter a draw,
or that she didn't have to buy every book they asked her to. in the end her son took over looking after her money.
she still tried buying things out of magazines and news papers, but as she asked me most of the time to post the orders, son asked that I put them all in an envelope and pass them to him.

[Pixie]

Re: The elderly and scams

Dad also gets people phoning him wanting to buy his shares. I was there one day when he received one such phone call and heard him start telling the caller what shares he had and how many I told him to ask them to write to him, he did and they put the phone down. He then got a rollicking from me for giving out information like that to some random caller.