You can't. End of discussion. I've tried. My parents are not very diligent in keeping up with tech at all. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they are tech illiterate.
Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
81–90 of 215 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
ChromeOS is more secure and far less expensive than MacOS, although as long as you keep your parents off of Windows you won't have to worry about ransomware.
OP is discussing iOS. MacOS is free. Google hardware is definitely less expensive than Apple’s though.
MacOS is free? Where can I download it? I need to setup a MacOS VM for development.
Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
#83A friend of mine who isn't young but not as old as my parents is a professor and couldn't tell between a system alert and a fake one on a web page and attempted to click it just before I stopped her. My parents recently received a phone call concerning a problem about their google account and how to "correct it" in which they were very obliged to "fix" the issue and it took some undoing to get them out of that mess.
The point being...
There are training videos and certification tests for this sort of thing that are required in government related PII jobs as social engineering is too easy to fool people but its naive to think these tools will be used unless it was tied to getting a retirement check etc. I guess just hand hold them on those issue until they get it or give up?
Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
#84My no. 1 thing is to always install and ad blocker in their browser. uBlock does a pretty good job of getting rid of all the fake download buttons and pop-ups.
And tell them explicitly that if their computer tells them they have a virus, they must not try to do anything about it and call you immediately. 99% of the time it's a fake pop-up and they don't want to look stupid so they follow its "friendly instructions" to "get rid of it" and end up making a mess.
Other than that, take away their admin privileges, set up 2AM auto-updates (or manual, if you're there often) and tell them to only store personal files in one specific directory, which is synced to something with CoW or daily backups (and then also sync the desktop just in case).
As for e-mail, I set up my grandparents with one e-mail for people they know and a gmail for everything else (like website registrations). That way, the personal address never* gets any spam.
Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
#85I'm really surprised at the replies in this thread, some are almost patronising. Parents might be old, but they're not dumb. People underestimate older people. Obviously there are some vulnerable adults that need a helping hand, I get that, but try just talking and teaching, it works wonders. The key is patience really.
Just because they have problems with computers and computer-mediated technology, doesn't mean they're dumb. Lots of wisdom there. But, unfortunately, most electronic means of communication are very poorly matched to how older people have interacted with others all their life. You can believe they are very smart, and also believe they need to interact with electronics/computers/internet resources in a different way th…
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Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
#86The number one thing you can do to help them is talk to them about being conned / scammed. That's by far the most likely way for them to get victimized online, and the only way that's seriously affected anyone I know. Since they're not technical, their natural self-defense against this kind of this has trouble functioning online. Talk to them about real world analogs to pop-up ads that look like virus scanner alerts,…
After hearing about them getting scammed several times I finally had my parents agree to contact me before they are paying for anything online unless it's on Amazon.
Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
#87I'm really surprised at the replies in this thread, some are almost patronising. Parents might be old, but they're not dumb. People underestimate older people. Obviously there are some vulnerable adults that need a helping hand, I get that, but try just talking and teaching, it works wonders. The key is patience really.
You say that but there's mounting research that we get more susceptible to financial scams as we age, especially in retirement years when we have the most money and make the juiciest targets.
NPR ran a series last week on the topic that was fascinating and deeply concerning [0]. It's not something you should just dismiss out of hand when we're just now starting to learn why your intuition might be wrong.
[0] https://www.marketplace.org/collection/brains-losses-aging-f...
Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
#88There's lots of good advice here, but one thing I see mentioned often is "get them on to operating system X." Age plays a factor in this - much as I love macOS I wish I hadn't switched my mother (88 now, around 80 when she switched) from Windows. She'd learned personal computing with Windows, and there are still things that trip her up with macOS, including basic things like differences between Windows Explorer and Finder. There are trade-offs - I've been on macOS for a long time so fixing issues is easy, remote desktop is seamless, and the risk of viruses is lower - but overall I think the costs have outweighed the benefits. Setting her up with a password manager would be even more discombobulating, but thankfully she doesn't use online (or even telephone) banking, or social media, otherwise I'd insist. She also knows that she can phone me or forward emails if she's not sure about something, and so far has been canny about spotting things like "your PayPal account needs re-authorisation" scams.
Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
#89My no. 1 thing is to always install and ad blocker in their browser. uBlock does a pretty good job of getting rid of all the fake download buttons and pop-ups. And tell them explicitly that if their computer tells them they have a virus, they must not try to do anything about it and call you immediately. 99% of the time it's a fake pop-up and they don't want to look stupid so they follow its "friendly instructions" t…
what is CoW?
Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?
#90Also tell them about phone scams. Over the last year I have received several very convincing phone calls and voice messages from people pretending to be the IRS or cops. It takes a lot of willpower to convince yourself that they are scams. A lot of scams can be stopped if you consult with someone before sending actual money. I think it's important to tell your parents that before they give anybody any money or accoun…
Some of the scams have the caller actually pretending to be YOU. So if they have the agreement to consult with you before sending any money, what are they going to do?
I would hope that my parents could tell me from another caller :-)