Creative Good
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Protecting elders and kids from predatory tech
By Mark Hurst • August 9, 2024

Tech is increasingly predatory toward users of all ages. But as always, the harms fall most heavily on vulnerable populations – in this case, the very young and the very old. I’ve been thinking about this recently. As a Gen Xer I’m smack dab in the middle of the “sandwich generation,” the period of middle age during which one takes care of elders (aging parents and others) as well as the younger generation (our kids and other young people).

Two of the most urgent questions right now, really for all of us – not just for Gen X – are:

1. How do we protect kids? and

2. How do we protect our elders?

And they do need to be protected. Tech companies, especially the multi-trillion-dollar beasts of Big Tech, have pursued exploitation as a business model for years now – and they’re only getting better at it.

Case in point is the recent WSJ article about how Facebook enables illegal drug sales. Here’s a gift link: Meta Has Run Hundreds of Ads for Cocaine, Opioids and Other Drugs (WSJ, July 31, 2024). Excerpt:

Meta Platforms is running ads on Facebook and Instagram that steer users to online marketplaces for illegal drugs, months after The Wall Street Journal first reported that the social-media giant was facing a federal investigation over the practice.

. . . “You don’t need the dark web anymore when you can just buy a Facebook ad to sell dangerous drugs or even scam people at a scale that wouldn’t have been possible through the dark web,” said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project.

Longtime readers might remember that I wrote a column in December 2021 called Are Facebook and Google criminal enterprises? which pointed out the drugs, near-extinct animals, and abuse videos on services like Facebook, Google’s YouTube, and Snapchat. It appears that not much has changed in the nearly three years since. As Futurism put it (July 31, 2024):

Meta continues to run ads on Facebook and Instagram selling cocaine and other illicit drugs — some of which have been found to contain fentanyl, a deadly opioid linked to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in recent years.

Fentanyl deaths of young people are continuing, without any meaningful crackdown on these companies, despite years of evidence of their wrongdoing. My point here is that predatory tech is here to stay and we have learn to protect ourselves – and each other.

I devoted an entire Techtonic episode to this idea. On July 29, I aired “Tech and the sandwich generation” show (see playlist / listen to the entire show / download the podcast), in which I offered tips to protect the young, the old, and really all of us, from the dangers of present-day tech.

Tips for kids and tech

For parents or guardians of young people, I passed along Jonathan Haidt’s tips from this column (Jan 18, 2024):

1. No smartphone before high school (give only flip phones in middle school)

2. No social media before age 16

3. Phone-free schools (all phones go into lockers or Yondr pouches during the day)

4. Far more free play and independence

. . . and I would add one more tip from Jean Twenge’s recent book Generations (as reviewed here):

5. Keep the phone out of the bedroom at night

You can see more sources, and excerpts, about kids and tech on the show playlist. I’ll highlight one article with some good news: Chalkbeat reports that New York City public schools are planning for a cellphone ban as early as February. Communities and instutions are beginning to shift, just a little, away from the Big Tech giants and in favor of kids. Let’s hope it continues.

Tips for elders and tech

Now for elders – parents and other aging relatives or friends. I’ll start with the first tip from the show:

• When someone calls claiming to be from the bank or another institution, hang up and call them back. If anyone asks for money, call a trusted advisor.

Many scammers today pretend to be calling from a financial or government institution so that they can access the target’s personal information or, worse, encourage the target to send them money. It’s not just elders getting fooled: finance writer Charlotte Cowles wrote about The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger (The Cut, from Feb 15, 2024). Even Cory Doctorow, tech commentator himself (and past Techtonic guest), wrote How I got scammed (Feb 5, 2024). (For that matter, see the 2018 scam that fooled Metafilter founder Matt Haughey.)

But elders can be particularly vulnerable to this scam. The New York Times ran a story recently with the print headline Scammers Target Older Americans, And All Their Retirement Savings (gift link, July 29, 2024). The headline on the website is a good summary: “How One Man Lost $740,000 to Scammers Targeting His Retirement Savings.” Barry Heitin, a retired lawyer, apparently went to a fraudulent website (via malware or a scam link) that posted his bank’s logo and the scammer’s phone number. The ruse proceeded from there. In hindsight, as soon as he was asked for money Heitin should have called his investment advisor, who could have independently called the bank (at the correct phone number) and headed off the scam.

Many elder-targeting scams involve phone calls. Here’s another tip:

• If someone calls claiming to be a grandkid in distress, hang up and call them back. Or call their parent or sibling to verify the news.

You may have heard about this one. It starts something like, “Grandpa? It’s me, your grandson. I’m in jail and need some bail money, can you help?” More sophisticated scammers can use an AI version of the grandson’s voice. (Recall that Microsoft claims it can clone a voice with only three seconds of audio.) The solution here again is to hang up and call the kid back. If they say “they took my phone at the jail,” call another family member.

Another solution is to ask a question that only the real grandkid would know the answer to. Something like this was in the news recently. From Ferrari exec foils deepfake attempt by asking the scammer a question only the CEO could answer (Fortune, July 27, 2024):

“Sorry, Benedetto, but I need to identify you,” the executive said. He posed a question: What was the title of the book Vigna had just recommended to him a few days earlier (it was Decalogue of Complexity: Acting, Learning and Adapting in the Incessant Becoming of the World by Alberto Felice De Toni)?

With that, the call abruptly ended.

There are lots more tips in my sandwich generation show, especially around managing and organizing digital assets. If you’re interested in diving into this further, join Creative Good to get access to our members-only Creative Good Forum, where we’re discussing this and other tech topics.

Note about Negativland: On the newest Techtonic (August 5, 2024) I spoke with Jon Leidecker, member of the band Negativland (and solo artist Wobbly). We talked about the band’s work in media collage, the “fair use” defense, and how things are changing with generative AI. See playlist / stream the show (interview starts at 8:32) / download the podcast.

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Until next time,

-mark

Mark Hurst, founder, Creative Good – see our services or join as a member
Email: mark@creativegood.com
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