AIBU to not understand why older people are more vulnerable

[helloclitty]

to scams. I don't really understand why people always refer to older people being targets for scams because they are more vulnerable. Do we lose our sense of logic as we get older?

I am genuinely interested to why older people seem to fall more easily for scams as I would have thought younger, less worldly people, would be more susceptible.

I think too that being in the workplace keeps you alert and therefore protected. Once you leave the workplace you leave that regular mental workout - and the water cooler chat that might keep you tuned in to that stuff.

My elderly neighbour got scammed by people emailing her and telling her she needed to reset her bank password. I didn't think anyone fell for that stuff any more - and in any case I don't usually see those emails because they get caught in our superstrong spam filter at work. When she got done over (but was thankfully, fully protected by her bank who refunded her everything even thought it was her "fault") she just wasn't aware of this sort of scam plus she didn't have the protection of a spam filter. If I didn't have an IT department at work I probably wouldn't be alert to the best sort of spam filter either.

Good for you hello!

puds - I do agree, of course it is a generalization. But I think that is how all scams operate, isn't it? They choose a general group which is overall more likely to fall for it. It doesn't mean everyone will - but that makes me the more furious that some do. Scams of all kinds really make me furious.

My granny was for years the sort of smart, sharp-tongued person who would not easily be taken in by anything. She actually went into the local school at taught maths as a volunteer TA until she was 83. Then very rapidly she went downhill, became very sick and very vulnerable. It was such a shock to realize that none of us is immune to that sort of thing and the fact she'd have spotted a scam easily just recently before she got sick makes it that much worse.

Another group of people who are vulnerable are those who don't read and write well. I constantly hear about people who were too embarrassed to admit they couldn't read an official-looking letter, and who got tricked.

Scammers are really disgusting people and I think we need to catch up with the internet age and get better at catching them.

It is a generalisation but in some cases a valid one. Although I think the current generation of much older people may be the last that place such a worrying faith in computers.

However, and I write as an old gimmer who was using computers back in the dawn of time, I'm regularly horrified by the number of much younger people who constantly manage to infect their computers by clicking on clearly dodgy links, relentlessly pass hoax scam messages around (despite it being the easiest thing in the world to check them out) and cannot seem to see a scam coming.

Vulnerability in the elderly always comes with a loss of other faculties and it is not unusual for older people to exist in a certain state of denial about this - and who can blame them? My grandfather, for example, would not accept that he'd lost most of his sight and I remember my grandmother discovering him about to conclude a transaction at the front door. According to my grandfather (90 at the time) the nice bloke that cleaned their windows had kindly offered to take some of the old furniture away and pay them £20 for it. It wasn't the window cleaner, of course, but a knocker boy from Brighton who was about to con them out of some valuable antiques.

My grandmother (then aged 86) also fell for a doorstep offer to replace the guttering because she was fairly immobile, with poor sight and was just beginning to get slightly confused about things. Had the conman who took £200 off her come round a year earlier she'd have sent him away with a flea in his ear. But certainly, she became worryingly trusting and for that reason, vulnerable. This vulnerability and state of denial came with very much older age, however. My mother, on the other hand, just got ever more awkward!

Not all older people are vulnerable, but if some were not more vulnerable, then scammers would not have a field day with them.

Also, when we are talking about "old people", there may be a difference according to age (65 is different from 85 in terms of health problems, for instance), but also, my cohort of old people (born in 1969) will be different from a cohort of old people born in 1929 because of how the world has changed

pande that is sad but rings so true.

It's impossible either way - I have known very elderly people who stop trusting everyone, including relatives, because they're no longer sure who is who. It can go both ways. It's just awful that anyone takes advantage.