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When Larz May’s grandmother was scammed years ago, it was over the phone. Today, May says, criminals are using modern tools for more sophisticated scams. Someone could take a video of her, splice it into a message, and send her grandmother something that looks and sounds like a real emergency. Her grandmother wouldn’t know the difference.
May, founder of #HalfTheStory, has spent her career studying how people build healthier relationships with technology. In a recent episode of the ComForCare podcast, May sits down with host Tiffany Robinson to discuss what’s changed about scams targeting older adults, and what families can do about it.
AI-driven investment scams have topped $8 billion a year, and they’re not slowing down. A scammer no longer needs to guess at a family’s details or fake a familial voice over the phone. They can pull a photo from social media, generate a voice, and build a message specific enough that a parent has no reason to doubt it.
Scammers will hit a family across multiple channels — a call, then a video, then an email — until one version gets through. With the amount of publicly-available data out there, they are able to gather enough detail to make the story hold up to basic scrutiny.
Some families in these situations have lost six figures in a single incident. Funds can be drained out of retirement accounts before anyone realizes what is happening. And the damage doesn’t stop with the person who was targeted. May points out that when a scam wipes out an older adult’s savings, the financial strain often lands on the adult children or caregivers who step in afterward.
Families often react to this increased risk by attempting to limit a parent’s internet access. May points out that this can be more harmful than helpful. After all, many older adults rely on that access to maintain positive connections with the broader world.
May identifies two categories of tech consumption: active and passive. These carry different levels of risk:
“If we’re not clear about what active tech consumption looks like for our elders versus passive tech consumption, we’re going to be in trouble,” she says, noting that this is why simply taking a device away doesn’t work.
May recommends shaping what a parent’s device actually does for them instead of shutting it down. She’s also direct about tone. Treating an aging parent’s phone the way a family might treat a five-year-old’s tablet time overlooks the independence and judgment that parent still holds, cognitive changes or not. The system May describes protects against scams without treating a parent like a child in the process.
May recommends families have a conversation where everyone agrees on what a scam attempt might look like, and what to do if one comes up. Three safeguards should come out of that conversation.
The first is a family code: a word or phrase specific enough that no one outside the family would guess it. May suggests it should be deliberately odd, memorable to the people who need it, and useless to anyone else. If a call or message ever claims to be a family member in trouble, the code is the question that settles it.
The second is a rule about how online purchases get made. May recommends a credit card with fraud protection over a debit card, since a debit card offers little recourse once money is gone. Paired with the family code, it gives an older adult a way to act on a request for help without becoming the point of failure if that request turns out to be fake.
May also brings up a safeguard most families don’t think to set up until something forces the issue: an encrypted password manager, like LastPass, that gives a trusted family member access to a parent’s accounts. She frames this as protection that outlasts the immediate risk — the same access that helps during a fraud attempt is what a family needs later, when it comes to managing a parent’s accounts after they pass.
May is just as focused on what a parent’s device can add to their life. She points to music as one entry point. Her grandmother, who had dementia, would engage with singing or dancing to music in a way she couldn’t always manage through conversation. “Music was just a way for her to come alive in a different way,” May says, “because she wasn’t able to engage with people emotionally in the way that they were used to.”
Small, consistent uses of technology that give an older adult a reason to stay engaged, such as a regular video call or an email exchange with a grandchild are excellent ways to strengthen connection.
Listen to the full episode of ComForConnections to hear Larz May and Tiffany Robinson talk through more of this conversation, including how families can start creating a safeguard system with an aging parent this week.
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