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Comment by defen | Hacker News Reader

I've told my parents and in-laws (mid 70s) two things (they're cognitively with-it as far as mid-70s people go, I don't know what advice would work for people who are losing their mental faculties). The things I told them are:

1) Gift card = scam. Always, 100% of the time. No government agency and no legitimate company will ask for payment via gift cards, ever. My in-laws nearly got scammed by "Apple support" calling to say their router had been hacked and was being used for illegal activity and that they needed to pay using iTunes gift cards to have "Apple support" "clean out their router".

2) Nothing is immediately urgent. Unless someone is dying in front of you, the problem can be solved later. Banks, government bureaucracies, lawsuits, etc all work via snail mail and lawyers and paperwork, not by calling you up and telling you you're going to jail and are going to lose all your money unless you do something immediately.

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This is great, and I'll add:

3) Never, ever, ever tell anyone anything if they contacted you. If it's the bank calling, or the government, or insurance, or the power company, or anyone else, say "Thanks, I'll call you back". Hang up the phone, wait an hour then find the phone number yourself (look on your bank card or whatever) and initiate contact with the company.

Same goes for emails. DON'T click links in emails. Delete the email. Wait an hour or two then research the phone number to call and initiate contact.

I will never even have a phone conversation with someone that called me (other than friends, of course)

and don't "google" for the phone number. Get it from the back of the bank card or your statement.

You could just use thunderbird as your email client and don't click the links in the emails. No 2 hour wait required.

Unless you are in England I don't believe they can hold up your line for minutes after you hang up.

To point 2, there are scam calls in Asia that would show up as your child's phone number, with someone saying they're from the hospital, the child has been in an accident, they're going to operate but they need payment first. I guess even in the "bad parts" of the world doctors would never delay treatment due to money, but maybe some parents don't consider this in their panic.

I wonder if having a duress as well as normal password (like in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx77j1vl4d8) is useful, but obviously if the caller is pretending the person is incapacitated, that goes out the window.

You are very lucky to live in a country where you can't even imagine that's an option. In countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, ... doctors won't see you if you can't pay. In some places you even have to provide donor blood to be able to get an operation! Leading to nightmares like this:

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/red-market-excerpt/

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