Guest Panelist. AARP ScamChat Wednesdays. Outsmarting Scammers Together
Updated: Aug 15
Outsmarting Scammers Together: My Time as a Guest Panelist on AARP's Scam Chat Wednesdays
This week I had the chance to join AARP California and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) for their Scam Chat Wednesdays series, a free weekly virtual session built to help people stay a step ahead of scammers. I came on as a guest panelist representing Students Against Scams, alongside the founder of StayCyberSafe, and we spent the hour talking about something we're both pretty passionate about: getting young people and older adults working together against fraud instead of treating it as two separate problems.
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AARP's Scam Chat Wednesdays:
Outsmarting Scammers Together August 5, 2026
The session's theme was "Outsmarting Scammers Together," and honestly, that's the whole point of what we're trying to build. Scam prevention usually gets framed as an issue for older adults, but the reality is that students and teens are dealing with plenty of scams too, just different ones. We shared how we got into this work in the first place, some of the scams we've personally run into, and the practical steps we recommend to older adults trying to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated fraud tactics.
We also got into the tools we've built to make this education more accessible. One highlight was walking through ScamHelp.ai, a free detection app that lets people upload a suspicious message or piece of content and get an analysis back, plus a learning module to build up scam recognition skills over time.
What stood out most was the live Q&A. We fielded real questions from the audience, and it was a good reminder that this stuff isn't abstract. People are dealing with active scam attempts right now, and they want real answers, not just general warnings.
Huge thanks to AARP California and DFPI for having Students Against Scams at the table. If you want to catch future sessions or watch the replay, keep an eye on AARP's Scam Chat Wednesdays page. This is exactly the kind of cross-generational collaboration that actually moves the needle on fraud prevention.
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