Your senior parents are easier to impersonate than you are

Your senior parents are easier to impersonate than you are

Older adults lost billions to identity fraud. Here are the simple account, credit and phone-safety steps families can take now

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Americans 60 and older filed 201,266 complaints with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2025 and reported $7.7 billion in losses, the highest total of any age group. The average loss for older victims was nearly $38,500, almost double the figure for younger filers. The Federal Trade Commission's December 2025 report to Congress estimated that the overall cost of fraud to older adults in 2024 ranged from $10.1 billion to $81.5 billion, depending on how underreporting is measured.

Two decades of breach dumps now sit between your parents and the systems still verifying them by date of birth, mailing address and the last four of a Social Security number. The same fields clear a bank's call center, and they're enough to register a Medicare account that your parents haven't claimed online. Locking those checks down has fallen to the adult children. Most of it is an afternoon's work.

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YOU HAVE A CREDIT FREEZE. IT STILL ISN’T ENOUGH

Older adults often have more financial, medical and government accounts for scammers to target. (Ljubaphoto/Getty Images)

Why older parents face higher identity theft risks

Older parents hold accounts at more institutions than their adult children do: banks, brokerages, Medicare, Social Security, pension administrators and mortgage holders. Each has its own verification process. A scammer who clears one of them finds a larger balance waiting on the other side.

Combined losses reported by older adults who lost more than $100,000 climbed from $55 million in 2020 to $445 million in 2024, an eightfold jump according to the FTC.

AI voice cloning has made phone calls one more verification step a scammer can clear. The FBI counted $893 million in AI-related scam losses in 2025, with victims 60 and over accounting for $352 million. A few seconds of public audio, whether from a voicemail greeting, a church livestream or a TikTok comment, is enough to recreate a grandchild's voice on a phone call to a parent.

Before you start locking anything down, sit down with your parent and make sure they understand each step. The goal is to help them stay protected, not take control away from them.

Start with credit, tax and mail protections

All four steps below run through the credit bureaus, the IRS or USPS. Each is free and takes under fifteen minutes.

• Freeze their credit at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Each bureau is handled separately. Freezes have been free since 2018 and can be lifted online when they apply for credit.
• Pull an IRS Identity Protection PIN for them at irs.gov/ippin. The six-digit PIN blocks fraudulent federal tax returns filed against their SSN, and a new PIN is issued each calendar year.
• Enroll them in USPS Informed Delivery before someone else does. Postal inspectors have flagged cases where criminals registered victims at usps.com to preview valuable mail, including replacement credit cards and benefit letters.
• Opt them out of pre-screened credit offers at optoutprescreen.com. A mailed form makes the opt-out permanent.

A credit freeze blocks new credit applications. An IP PIN blocks fraudulent tax returns. Neither keeps an eye on credit files after the fact, so consider adding credit monitoring for all three bureaus. Alerts can help your family spot suspicious activity faster and decide which account to lock down first.

HOSPICE FRAUD USES STOLEN IDENTITIES FOR FAKE PATIENTS

A credit freeze, IRS Identity Protection PIN and USPS Informed Delivery can help block common identity theft moves. (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)

Claim federal accounts before scammers do

Pre-register a my Social Security account at ssa.gov in their name. Do the same at MyMedicare.gov if they qualify. Once those accounts exist, no one else can open them using their SSN. State Medicaid portals work the same way.

Also, help them turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) for important accounts and store passwords in a trusted password manager. Reused passwords make it easier for scammers to move from one exposed account to another.

Medicare Summary Notices arrive quarterly when there are covered services. Read each one with your parents for charges they don't recognize. The Senior Medicare Patrol, a federally funded program in every state, will walk through suspicious billing with families at no charge.

In a Medi-Cal hospice case charged this April in California, prosecutors said operators bought SSNs from breach dumps and enrolled non-California residents as terminally ill hospice patients, then billed the state for visits that never happened. The fraud first appeared in beneficiary statements.

Credit monitoring can also help spot signs that personal information has already surfaced online. Some services scan the dark web, data broker sites and people-search sites for Social Security numbers, addresses, driver's license numbers and other identifiers. Alerts can show what was found and where, helping you decide which account to lock down first.

Create a family script for suspicious calls

None of the protections above stops a phone call. Two small habits can help.

• Set a family code word. If a grandchild calls in trouble and cannot say the word, the call ends. The code is a fact that no voice cloning model can guess from public audio.
• Write down what real federal agencies never do. The Social Security Administration, the IRS and Medicare do not place out-of-the-blue calls asking for a full SSN, demand payment in gift cards or cryptocurrency or threaten arrest. Tape that list near the phone. Any caller who breaks one of those rules is a scammer.

A family code word can help stop AI voice-cloning scams before money or personal information changes hands. (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)

What to do if identity fraud appears

A financial power of attorney signed in advance authorizes an adult child to handle bills, disputes and account changes on a parent's behalf. With one in hand, the day-one fraud response can run without the parent on every call: pull all three credit reports, file at IdentityTheft.gov, place fraud alerts at each bureau and contact the affected creditor in writing.

Some identity theft protection services also include fraud resolution support. A specialist may help work with credit bureaus, creditors and collection agencies if someone misuses your information. Some plans also include identity theft insurance for eligible recovery costs and family coverage that can extend monitoring and support to parents in another household.

No service prevents every misuse of an older adult's identity. The settings above shorten the time between when fraud happens and when someone in the family acts on it.

See my tips and best picks on Best Identity Theft Protection at CyberGuy.com.

Join CyberGuy Live: Lock Down Your Phone in 30 Minutes (Saturday, June 13, 10 am ET)

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Kurt's key takeaways

Protecting an older parent's identity does not require a tech overhaul. It starts with a few smart moves: freeze their credit, claim key government accounts, set up an IRS IP PIN and agree on a family code word for suspicious calls. These steps can make it much harder for scammers to use stolen personal information before anyone notices. The bigger issue is that many systems still rely on information criminals may already have, such as birthdays, addresses and partial Social Security numbers. That puts more pressure on families to act early, monitor accounts and respond fast when something looks wrong. A little preparation now can save your parents from months of stress, financial damage and paperwork later.

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Have you or an older loved one dealt with identity theft, Medicare fraud or a suspicious phone call that sounded real? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com.

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Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on "FOX & Friends." Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

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