How to protect your parents, family (and yourself) from scam calls and fraud

In 2023, US residents over 60 lost $3.4 billion to fraudsters, and 87% of those losses were linked to personal information theft – here’s how to stop scam calls.

Historically, older Americans have tended to be less familiar with new technologies than their younger counterparts. Criminals have long recognized that people over 60 often represent lucrative opportunities.

Fraudsters increasingly use sophisticated tools to identify, target, and exploit this vulnerable group with scam calls that use personal details harvested from data brokers. Just a single scam call answered on an iPhone or Android can result in financial fraud, theft, and heartbreak.

Data brokers rank high among criminals’ favorite tools. These brokers, ranging from the easily accessible people-search sites to the more secretive ones that avoid the public eye, are rich sources of personal data. Criminals leverage this information to craft more effective and damaging schemes. 

Researchers at data-erasing service Incogni, created by cybersecurity Surfshark, examined data regarding internet crimes against people over the age of 60, which they sourced from the Annual Reports and Elder Fraud Reports published by the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a division of the FBI.

The Incogni researchers identified 12 crime categories (out of 30) that may be made possible or worse if criminals have access to the information data brokers deal with. The chart the researchers put together identifies those categories and provides some striking examples:

How Incogni protects you and your family

Incogni removes users’ information from over 170 data brokers and various people search sites, making it harder for anyone to buy, trade, sell, or find users’ information online. This significantly reduces the chance of receiving scam calls.

Incogni tenaciously jumps through data companies’ hoops, sticking to each one’s particular removal procedure. They do the tedious and frustrating work so that you and your family don’t have to.

They send opt-out requests faster than you can say, “Privacy, please,” so you get efficient and continuous privacy protection. They ensure your data is deleted from people search sites such as PeopleFinders, FastpeopleSearch, and UsPhoneBook.

Incogni deals with extra data broker interactions like rejection appeals. The best part is that Incogni restarts the whole process every couple of months to keep data out of circulation.

That means fewer scam calls from fraudsters, and peace of mind.

9to5Mac readers, you exclusively get 55% off Incogni’s annual plans by using code “9to5mac” on the billing information page – and the special discount also applies to Incogni’s Family & Friends plan that allows up to five people to share an account.

You can cancel at any time, and it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. So there’s really nothing to lose – apart from your online privacy.

Follow Incogni on Twitter here.