Elderly Care in the Cyber Age

Posted: 6/11/2015 1:56 PM by Interim HealthCare

How has elderly care changed in modern years? Thanks to technology advances, there have been a lot of changes within the health care industry, and elderly care providers have a great number of tools that are available to them now to provide the best elderly care possible that weren’t available just a few short years ago. It’s also important, even though the medical advances are beneficial, to realize that the cyber age has also created a number of new risks for our elderly loved ones.

In the cyber age, it makes it much easier for con artists to find gullible individuals who simply do not understand enough about email, spam, phishing scams, and other issues to help protect themselves. That is why it is important for us to not only educate our loved ones about the risks involved with the cyber age, but to also keep track of the things they are doing online, assuming they are connected to the Internet in some way, shape, or form.

One of the biggest risks that there are for elderly individuals in the cyber age is known as a phishing scam. If your loved one has an email address and regularly checks his or her email every day, they will likely, at some point in time, begin receiving spam or junk email. Sophisticated con artists have the ability to make these emails appear as though they are from legitimate companies, especially financial institutions.

For example, if your mother banks at a local institution, she may receive an email that appears to come from them telling her that something is wrong with her account and that they need more information to verify it. The email will provide a link that will open a website that looks exactly like the real bank’s legitimate website. It will have a login portal and the individual is expected to login to. However, this site is a trap and its only goal is to gain access to user name and password information so that they can access the account on the real website.

We spend a lot of time making sure that children are safe when spending time online. However, it is very important when it comes to elder care in the cyber age to ensure that our loved ones are just as safe. New technology can be confusing and can be overwhelming. Take the time to work with your elderly loved one and their elderly care provider, if they have one, to help ensure that they are safe in the cyber age.

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