How to protect your elderly parents from identity theft and elder fraud

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

Twenty years of criminal convictions now reside between your parents and systems that still verify your date of birth, mailing address and the last four digits of your Social Security number. The same fields clear the bank’s call center, and are enough to register a Medicare account that your parents didn’t search for online. Locking those checks fell to the older kids. Most of it is an afternoon job.

Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy report

• Get my best tech tips, emergency security alerts and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox.
• For simple, real-world ways to spot scams early and stay protected, visit CyberGuy.com – trusted by the millions who watch CyberGuy on TV every day.
• Plus, you’ll get instant access to mine Ultimate Scam Survival Guide free when you join.

YOU HAVE DEBT DEBT. IT IS NOT ENOUGH

Why elderly parents face the dangers of identity theft

Aging parents have accounts in more institutions than their older children: banks, brokerages, Medicare, Social Security, pension managers and homeowners. Each has its own verification process. A scammer who clears one of them finds a large balance waiting on the other side.

Combined loss older adults have been reported those who lost more than $100,000 rose from $55 million in 2020 to $445 million in 2024, an eightfold jump according to the FTC.

AI voice processing for phone calls is another verification step that can weed out a fraudster. The FBI has estimated $893 million in AI-related fraud losses by 2025, with victims age 60 and older accounting for $352 million. A few seconds of social noise, whether it comes from a voicemail greeting, a church live stream or a TikTok comment, is enough to recreate a grandchild’s voice on a 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 safe, not to take away control.

Start with credit, tax and mail protection

All four steps below go through the credit bureaus, IRS or USPS. Each one is free and takes less than fifteen minutes.

• Stop their debt from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Each office is handled separately. Freezes have been free since 2018 and can be raised online when applying for credit.
• Pull the IRS Identity Protection PIN to them in irs.gov/ippin. A six-digit PIN prevents fraudulent federal tax returns being filed against their SSN, and a new PIN is issued each calendar year.
• Sign up for USPS Informed Delivery before anyone else does. Postal inspectors flagged cases where criminals registered victims on usps.com to preview important mail, including replacement credit cards and benefits letters.
• Get out of pre-approved credit programs of optoutprescreen.com. The emailed form makes the opt-out permanent.

A to stop debt block new credit applications. IP PIN prevents fraudulent tax returns. No one is keeping an eye on credit files after the fact, so consider adding credit monitoring to all three bureaus. Alerts can help your family spot suspicious activity quickly and decide which account to close first.

DIRECTION OF COMPLETE USE OF GUARANTEED PATIENTS

Credit freezes, IRS Identity Protection PIN and USPS Informed Delivery can help prevent common identity theft moves. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Claim government accounts before fraudsters do

Pre-register a mine Social Security Account at ssa.gov on their behalf. Do the same on MyMedicare.gov if they qualify. If those accounts still exist, no one else can open them using their SSN. State Medicaid sites work the same way.

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

Medicare summary notices come quarterly if there are covered services. Read each one with your parents about the crimes they don’t know. The Senior Medicare Patrol, a state-sponsored program in every state, will walk through questionable bills and families at no charge.

In a Medi-Cal hospice lawsuit filed in April in California, prosecutors said operators bought SSNs from credit dumps and enrolled non-California residents. such as terminally ill patientsthen charged the state with a visit that never happened. Fraud began to appear on beneficiary statements.

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

Create a family script for suspicious calls

There is no additional protection to block the call. Two little habits can help.

• Set a family code name. If the grandchild calls in trouble and cannot say the name, the call ends. The code is the fact that no speech synthesis model can predict social noise.
• Write down what real government agencies don’t do. The Social Security Administration, IRS and Medicare do not make calls out of the blue full SSN pleasedemand payment in gift cards or cryptocurrency or threaten arrest. Tape that list next to the phone. Any caller who violates one of those rules is a fraud.

A family code name can help stop AI-speech scams before money or personal information changes hands. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

What to do if identity fraud occurs

A pre-signed financial power of attorney authorizes the older child to handle debts, disputes and account changes on behalf of the parent. One-handed, one-day fraud response can work without a parent on each call: pull all three credit reports, put in IdentityTheft.govplace fraud alerts at each office and contact the creditor concerned in writing.

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

No service prevents all abuse of an adult’s identity. The above settings shorten the time between when fraud occurs and when someone in the family does something about it.

See my tips and top picks for Best Identity Theft Protection at CyberGuy.com.

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

Your phone holds your email, passwords, photos, banking apps and personal data. In this free, live online class, Kurt the CyberGuy will walk you step-by-step through real-time phone security fixes. You’ll learn how to improve your privacy settings, spot the latest phone scams, use trusted security tools and go with a simple checklist to stay protected. Register here: CyberGuyLive.com

Kurt’s priority is taking

Protecting an elderly parent’s identity does not require a technological overhaul. It starts with a few smart steps: freezing their debts, looking for important government accounts, setting the IRS IP pin and agreeing to the family code name for suspicious calls. These measures can make it more difficult for fraudsters to use stolen personal information before anyone sees it. The biggest problem is that many systems still rely on information that criminals may already have, such as dates of birth, addresses and part of Social Security numbers. That puts more pressure on families to act early, monitor accounts and respond quickly if something goes wrong. A little preparation now can save your parents months of stress, financial damage and paperwork later.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS PROGRAM

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

Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy report

• Get my best tech tips, emergency security alerts and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox.
• For simple, real-world ways to spot scams early and stay protected, visit CyberGuy.com – trusted by the millions who watch CyberGuy on TV every day.
• Plus, you’ll get instant access to mine Ultimate Scam Survival Guide free when you join.

Copyright 2026 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.