{"id":2522,"date":"2019-08-26T07:37:32","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T11:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2522"},"modified":"2019-08-26T05:41:30","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T09:41:30","slug":"no-resting-in-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/no-resting-in-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"No Resting in Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robin<\/a>There are so many ways to be conned. Especially if you\u2019re a senior citizen. I used to worry that my mother would lose all of her little fortune to some cruel predator. Living alone, in her nineties, and hard of hearing, my mom was the perfect target for Medicare scams, fake charities, cyber-stalking, con artists selling counterfeit prescription drugs or anti-aging products, and phony grandkid-in-trouble-send-money messages. I had nightmares that she\u2019d be a victim of identity theft or credit-card fraud. She was always getting calls from telemarketers and various organizations asking for donations. And who knows what phishing and financial hoaxes plagued her emails.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mom loved sweepstakes and lotteries. You\u2019re the lucky winner, they\u2019d announce: just pay a couple-hundred for shipping and handling. Buy or donate and you\u2019ll have a chance to win… they\u2019d lure her in. My mother had a hard time saying no to any of these, as witnessed now by the piles of her junk mail still being forwarded daily to my house.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s in a better place now,\u201d people said when Mom died last winter, \u201cMay she rest in peace.\u201d But there was no resting in peace for me. I went crazy phoning to pay the bills and close all her accounts. Banks, Medicare, Department of Motor Vehicles…. At every institution, I was repeatedly asked for her birth date, her passwords and mother\u2019s maiden name, her \u201csocial\u201d and address. For months I felt queasy spewing out her private information to these strangers over the phone. But not as nauseous as last week when my sister told me of the alert from one of the medical providers: they\u2019d been hacked and Mom\u2019s personal data had been breached.<\/span><\/p>\n

It felt like I, myself as much as my dead mother, had been invaded. Robbed. Violated. I avoided leaving home and didn\u2019t answer the phone. Had I somehow contributed to that cyber crime? I stayed off Facebook for days.<\/span><\/p>\n

My friend emailed me a photo she\u2019d snapped. Me. In \u201ca rare relaxing moment,\u201d she wrote. This might be the last time you see me resting because OMG, I\u2019m the vulnerable senior now. And I\u2019m horrified that I won\u2019t even be safe from hackers when I\u2019m dead.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Have you checked your credit rating lately? What do you do to protect your identity, your money, your peace?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are so many ways to be conned. Especially if you’re a senior citizen. I used to worry that my mother would lose all of her little fortune to some cruel predator. Living alone, in her nineties, and hard of hearing, my mom was the perfect target for Medicare scams, fake charities, cyber-stalking, con artists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1758],"tags":[1948,1947,1945,1946],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1758","tag-data-breach","tag-identity-theft","tag-no-rest-in-peace","tag-seniors-and-cyber-crime"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}