FiL genuinely believes he is a tech expert and will insist on buying all the latest gadgets which he cannot use at all. We get called to their house at least once a week to sort out the terrible problems that the devices are causing. He’ll regularly hark back to the days of XP, which was the best software ever produced and Microsoft have continuously shot themselves in the foot since then by trying to improve things when they should have realised they had achieved perfection and stopped there. He also talks about the amazing desktop computer he bought in 1993 – he was an early adopter of technology you see and the first person he knew to have internet installed in his house). The trouble is, he kept that desktop, along with its dial-up broadband until 2011 when he was finally persuaded that it was old tech and he should upgrade. Since then, he’s had two laptops which have caused no end of trouble and he now refuses to even open them as he’s scared they will catch a virus. Honestly I’ve never known a man so susceptible to computer hacks and viruses, everything that could possibly have gone wrong with these laptops has done and, of course, this would never have happened with his trusty old desktop.
He doesn’t trust the internet, believing by default that if anything is published online is automatically fake news because the internet is written by kids having a laugh. So even if he sees something incredibly basic and in most people’s general knowledge like, say, the capital of France is Paris, he’ll hum and haw about how there might be a trick going on somewhere. His arguments with Alexa are something to behold. This obviously begs the question why he is so determined to own so many tech devices and be so connected at all and the only answer I can find is that it is about keeping up with the Joneses and showing that he can afford these things, pretending he can use them(!) and is therefore better than his peers.
He has an iphone (obviously) but frequently deletes his favourite apps, including the internet or his email app which causes panic and an emergency visit to reinstall things. Recently he had to complete an online questionnaire for travel insurance and didn’t know how to “put a cross (X) next to applicable answers”. We had to go round to help him and explain that there is no special X symbol for this purpose. The letter X is the same as any other X but he was still sceptical – how would the insurance company know that he meant to put a cross and not simply a letter X. This could completely muck up his insurance. Around the same time, MiL was having an issue with booking flights online because the computer had deleted her email address. Turned out she was receiving an error message saying she had input an incorrect email address and this was because she had used commas instead of full stops (MiL,2@gmail,com). She still shakes her head in disbelief, laughing about how the internet is supposed to be so clever and yet couldn’t work this out, I mean, commas and full stops are basically the same thing. They are in awe of our ability to solve these problems and tell everyone that I have “a very high up job in computers”. I don’t work in IT at all.
A few weeks ago, he called us in a panic because his bank account had been hacked. He was obviously angry that he had lost money (£2k!) but was more worried that the same thing would happen to us because we have far less money to start with than him (he can afford to lose with £2k without losing sleep). DH and I asked him to talk us through what happened and he said they received a call from the bank on their landline, saying there was a computer virus which was affecting their bank account so they dutifully followed the man’s instructions, logging into their bank account online and telling him their password and account details. They then watched their balance change in real time as the nice man made a test payment to them of £2 to check the connection was there but then when he reversed that, he must have made a mistake because he removed £2000 rather than just the £2. The nice man reassured him that everything was ok and it would get sorted but it make take a few days. FiL wanted to know exactly when he would see the money back in his account because he’s not in the habit of opening the laptop every day. He only switches it on when he really needs to because otherwise viruses get it, don’t you know. Because the man couldn’t give him a definite date and time to check again, MiL decided to phone their local branch from her mobile to see if they could provide an answer . They obviously told them to hang up the call immediately and froze their account, telling them they almost lost a hell of a lot more than £2k. What really confused us about this story is that PiL have both been vocally opposed to online banking over the years and said they would never sign up to such a thing. When we questioned this, FiL said that of course he doesn’t do online banking. He just has an app that lets him check his balance from the laptop but he would never do online banking. He also believes that throughout this saga, the laptop was the thing at fault. The hack had nothing at all to do with him giving away his personal details, it was because the laptop was too easy to break into (and this would never have happened with the old desktop). He then got really paranoid that the hackers would still be in his laptop and going through all his photos so he deleted everything and threw the laptop away. He’s now replaced it with a Samsung Galaxy Tab but has still got that app which is definitely not online banking but allows him to look at his account balances.