It’s not like I marked the exact date or time on the calendar, but otherwise I still clearly recall the day I officially got old.
It wasn’t while having to catch my breath after taking the stairs. It wasn’t from the first time my feet got sore standing in line, being asked if I wanted to apply the senior discount, or seeing grey hair on my head. It wasn’t from watching TV or listening to the radio and having no idea who any of these ostensibly world-famous performers or athletes are. All those things already happened ages ago and I could have remained in cheerful denial for years to come.
That is, until some fool phoned here one day and said “Grandpa?”
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I’d long suspected previous callers — those who’d hung up immediately when I answered the phone — were cold-calling for the Grandparent Scam and scrubbed their mission only when I said “Hello?” like a young lad of just 30 or 40. But now, I knew, I sound old enough for some random stranger to try to pass himself off as the grandson I never had (and still don’t).
Mind you, he may have been gambling that I was old enough to be his grandfather, just by virtue of me even picking up a telephone in the year 2024 to speak to an unknown caller — or any caller — in the first place, because who even does that anymore? Anyway, I laughed out loud; he hung up without a second word.
The Grandparent Scam, like many others, is so tailored to prey on the isolation, fears and cares of seniors that a lot of us tend to conflate advanced age with advanced vulnerability to scams generally. However, while the oldest of us are certainly disproportionately targeted, a survey in January of over 1,500 Canadian adults suggests youth is no guarantee of awareness — nor does it make one all that much less likely to be a target.
The survey, run by Maru Public Opinion for TD Bank, which released the results in mid-February, found 29 per cent would balk at talking at home about their own experiences with financial fraud. Curiously, though, it found 51 per cent of Gen-Z respondents (people born in about the late ’90s or in the ’00s) felt that way, compared to 39 per cent of millennials (born in the ’80s to mid-’90s) and 23 per cent of my fellow Gen-Xers (born in the later ’60s or in the ’70s). The same survey showed 45 per cent of Gen-Zers, 34 per cent of millennials and 26 per cent of Gen-Xers have run up against a financial fraud or scam, or at least an attempt at same.
Let me assure you, anecdotally at least, this doesn’t prove Generation X is somehow more worldly or knowledgeable. Just because I didn’t lose money to those old email scams doesn’t mean I always recognized all of them right away for what they were, when they started landing in my inbox decades ago. If anything, it may be that younger people, who live more of their lives online, are more likely to run up against an online scam attempt — or it may just be that some of the same old grifts are coming around again, just in new forms. Sure, that Nigerian Prince email only rarely gets past most spam filters these days, but how many of us have had a text message lately from an unknown number, saying you could have a carbon tax rebate payment — if not your own, then somebody else’s — if you just click on the link?
Here’s where the TD survey had some more telling numbers: 73 per cent of respondents said they don’t talk about, or otherwise inform their family members about, financial safety and fraud prevention — and 60 per cent said they’d feel less of a target if they and their families regularly shared knowledge on the matter of financial frauds and scams.
Shying away from this sort of discussion is somewhat understandable, as no one ever really wants to look like a dupe, not even when talking with people who care about them — but if I may apply the old saying from George Santayana here, not talking openly about past frauds or scams pretty much assures we’re all condemned to have them repeated upon us, now and in the future.
LISTEN: The cyber-savvy farmer
That tracks with what our friend Janos Botschner of the Community Safety Knowledge Alliance said at the CropConnect Conference here in town last month — and in this issue — on the more specific topic of farm cybersecurity: “If we can start to open up our minds and see, ‘Oh, wait a minute, this is not that different’ … maybe some baby steps toward cybersecurity can be a little bit more achievable.”
As someone who’s now old enough to wonder daily why I still own a phone anymore at all, I couldn’t agree more — so let’s talk about it. If you’ve been hit by cybercrime or financial scams, or attempts at same, on your farm, I do recommend you talk to your family and local authorities as soon as possible — but if you also feel your experience may be helpful to other farmers, drop us a line. We’re not out to name and/or shame anyone with this exercise, but we’d like to devote some more ink to this topic in this space and Grandpa Dave would prefer to do so with your help.
