Australians 65 and older are disproportionately affected by scams of all types. Losses among this age group easily exceed those of younger generations. Meanwhile, over half of Australians in this age range depend on government support as their main source of income. CHOICE is interested in talking to anyone in this age range - or to a friend or relative of a senior Australian - who’s been affected by a scam.
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I am just a few weeks short of this age group and it constantly amazes me how older people fall for these scams.
I am 75 and receive at least a dozen dodgy emails per day. I report them as spam and block sender but they keep on coming. I know being discriminated many of my vintage who are afraid to use computers (and ATMs!) because they never learnt to use them at work or home when the technology arrived. Now that so many government and businesses insist on us using electronic transactions to deal with them, these people are in effect facing discrimination by the policy makers.
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Sometimes some bloody-mindedness by oldies contributes to their undoing. My 80 year old brother has a computer which regularly sends out messages to the people in his address book, including me, that always contain a link that I dare not click on. I regularly tell him to stop clicking on funny pictures and the like from his friends because they will often contain a virus, but he responds that he is not going to cease clicking on these pictures etc because “you have to live.”
This week, I told him that his computer once again has been broadcasting virus laden emails and his response to that was that he has changed his password. Of course, I told him that is a waste of time because the viruses are coming via emails from his mates and that he should pay the $ to install a virus destroying software program like Norton and also cease clicking on any attachments that are sent to him by his mates.
Likewise to the people above, I get plenty of shonky emails each day plus lots of shonky phone calls. I used to abuse the callers who invariably had a very foreign accent but reckoned that their name was something very anglo like “Bill Smith.” 
These days I don’t abuse them. I just ask them if they like eggs and whether they will buy some from me. After their puzzled silence, I hang up. 
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It may not be your brother’s computer sending out emails or messages. It could be that his contact data has been compromised sometime in the past, and hackers are masquerading as him to send you and others in the contact list mallicious payload.
This is nasty, because you tend to trust emails or SMS from people you know. And the sender address seems correct since it is spoofed to be that of the person you know.
I just never ever click on links. Unless I have verified the sender by my own means.
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What I fine really annoying is that you block all these emails and yet they keep showing up in your inbox or junk mail but states you have blocked contact. I would have thought once you had blocked them that would be the end of it but apparently not. You still have to delete them daily.
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@deb2 I think that’s a bit unfair. The media may keep commenting in this space on “older Australians” but don’t bother defining what that means.
Some Australians are less familiar with technology than others. It’s likely that the older you are, the less familiar you will be. On top of that, there is a (perception that wealth is more common in older people (wherever that starts) so scammers are more likely to target those who are perceived to have wealth. Statistically, then, the young (?) are less likely to be victims.
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My wife and I receive at least once each day automated calls (with Chinese accents) from ATO, parcel delivery, Australia Post, … We each block the numbers but they are relentless, wasting our time more than the AI bot. BUT: I don’t understand why the Telcos don’t allow you to report the number as a SCAM so that they can track the source and stop any further calls.
Similarly, it’s clear that banks are not providing duty of care in terms of checking that transfers are going to the places intended and that accounts are actually genuine.
We’re both >65
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Spot on Gregr! I’m constantly receiving emails (with a long cc list) from a close friend but when checking the actual source, I find they are generated from a variety of overseas addresses. It would appear that her mailing list has been passed along several times 
However, my friend, in her 70’s is not very tech savvy, refuses to be brought up to date and has been using the same simple password since she first got a computer 20 years ago, so is not entirely blameless
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There is no point. If they could track the source overseas what can be done? Our government claims to be stopping millions of calls but from the point of view of one who also gets them all the time they are achieving nothing of practical value.
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Agree. I live in a rural area. Ive worked in libraries where people come in to use the public computers. Older people, people on very low incomes, and people who generally have never done more than labourers work, have often never used computers before.
Some struggle now just to apply for jobs because it’s all online. Their actual phones are only used for receiving and making calls. So blaming people for not understanding is really short sighted and fsils to consider circumstances.
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Because a lot of the phone numbers a “spoofed”. Ie they’ve changed their number to appear to be a number that could belong to a legitimate business. So even if the TELCOs did trace the number, it won’t lead to the scammer.
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Emails I can deal with, although I’m finding myself increasingly telling my spouse if an email is safe or not (he checks with me if he’s suspicious. He’s 62)
The phone calls however… on mobile, instant hangup and block. We still have a “landline” (VOIP now) and all calls generally go to answering machine. Now if i could just convince my spouse not to answer when he’s home because it might be “someone needing us urgently”. All our regular contacts have ID attached. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message. Amazing how many hang up immediately when they hear the recorded message.
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Im 63 and constantly trying to upgrade my tech knowledge. I have friends of my age that are not interested in knowing more, they sadly will be the ones who get scammed.
Please see this site, run by the fed govt and easy to use to upgrade.
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I have not been scammed, but get lots of calls and emails, and report them to ScamWatch, so I guess it looks like lots of over 65s are being targetted. Turn back 10 years when I was working and I just wouldn’t have the time to report.
Education is the best approach. I keep telling our family and friends how scams work. It is good to see Telcos, Banks and others now telling people what to look out for. Pitty it took a lot of pushing to get them to do this.
Welcome to the community @Foojay
Thank you for pointing the site out.
For many of us there remains the problem of how to not block or fail to answer calls from government (all levels). They are rarely able to leave a return number, and often do not leave a message. The calling number ID is rarely predictable. We’ve had instances where reviews or follow up with the ATO, CentreLink etc have timelines of weeks out to one month or longer.
More recently similar problems have come about with follow up from our electricity retailer or previously one of the telcos. For other than vanilla needs resolution may require the attention of a specialist requiring multiple calls over days or a week. Only sometimes the source number (leading 4 digits plus area code) is consistent.
The only potential solution the government website resources offered was the Telstra Call Guardian fixed line phone service. It has limitations. Firstly being wedded to Telstra. Secondly one needs to be close by the phone to be able to respond as required. A third point is the caller needs to be patient and follow the prompts rather than just hang up. What one might want a scammer to do, but not the ATO or your electricity retailer.
This places greater personal reliance on how one responds when answering a call that one is unsure of. It is not always as easy as only answering callers listed in your contacts.
P.S. Several other topics further discussion on scam phone calls.
‘Phone Scams Warnings - #24 by mark_m
‘More Creative Scams - #25 by syncretic
‘Anti-scam Centre - #10 by phb
I have noticed recently that Facebook has been bombarding me with sponsered ads in my feed. Reason being, so they say, targetted because of my age group. Well I did turn 65 recently. Mind you, my birthday is set to friends only, and DOB is set nowhere I can see.
Some of them are clearly bait adds to entice spending online. Or clicking on links. I did actually click on a link to see a menu from a resturant that had some nice looking pictures, and my browser, Chrome, refused due to to an invalid security certificate. Thankyou browser.
Any attempt to hide the ads or report them as not interested results in this message:
“Oops
Something went wrong. We’re working on getting it fixed as soon as we can.”
That stinks of a scam to me.
I consider myself to be pretty tech-aware but I can see the benefit of doing a lot of reading and listening at this site… thanks so much for the link!
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I find that the easiest way around this is to install an app to get rid of fb advertising. When I visit fb on computer, I have fbpurity as a browser extension. The problem with facebook is that nearly every website in existence has little facebook pixels dotted here and there (even Aunty ABC had them at one stage) so you’ll get ads (for example) for beds or whatever you searched for without even being on facebook at the time.
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