Our Society Won't Protect Your Grandparents from Scammers

Millions of older adults are losing their life savings to the increasingly sophisticated digital scams empowered by AI, yet today's system offers almost no meaningful protection. To highlight, research based on data from the FTC & FBI shows that Americans lost an estimated $13 billion to scams in 2024. And people 60 and older accounted for $2.4 billion of those losses, and the actual figure is likely much higher, since many seniors don't report scams. The root causes of this problem stem from 3 systemic failures.

First, digital platforms like Google and Meta earn revenue from scam ads but aren't held financially responsible when people fall victim to those scams. A Reuters investigation found that these platforms earn roughly 10% of their ad revenue from scammers. We may never know how much these platforms truly generate from scam ads, but it's not hard to refute Reuters' story.  If you do a Google search for the term “How do I recover my money I lost from a scam,” you will see only fake scam recovery websites as sponsors. Or if you show interest in investments on Instagram, your feed will start filling up with phony investment scam ads. Since these platforms make money with no costs, they have no incentive to implement protective measures.

Second, market failures leave seniors unprotected. The cybersecurity industry is valued at over a trillion dollars, yet companies like CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Fortinet focus exclusively on enterprise security. There's no money in protecting individual seniors for these industry leaders. Many seniors find consumer-grade antivirus products like McAfee too expensive and the installation process prohibitive.  So this lack of market incentives leaves older adults defenseless and vulnerable.

Third, our institutions and laws can't help. For instance, when I interviewed a Thousand Oaks detective for my project, he admitted, “law enforcement can't do much after a victim deposits money to a scammer through the local Bitcoin ATM at a 7-Eleven store. Because most scammers operate overseas, jurisdictional and technological barriers make prosecution and recovery practically impossible.”  So then, in most cases, after losing their life savings, "All we can do is write a police report." Thus implying that our legal system wasn't designed for borderless digital crime, leaving seniors with no path to justice or restitution after falling for a scam.

Together, these three systematic failures create a society in which older adults are left with this problem unresolved. Seniors need a system that actively intervenes before they ever reach a Bitcoin ATM, click a fraudulent link, or initiate a transfer, an AI system designed to enhance its ability to detect and avoid fraudulent links or sketchy sites.