The problem with that approach is people don’t engage with the education efforts, and if they learn anything it tends to be incomplete and often not helpful. Like people who hear about the Marketplace scams and believe PayID is an unsafe payment method, rather than realising that it is a scam involving fake PayID messages. People tend to pick up weird nearly superstitious ideas about how to protect themselves, while skipping the bits that are actually helpful. I’m not sure that you can prevent that, it’s just the way people are. Making it possible for people to speak to real people at banks and institutions, through communication channels they understand, would have to be a start though. Pushing people to navigate through various constantly changing systems of messaging, chatbots and voice recognition phone systems is just creating more vulnerability.
I remember about… 20-25 years ago I used to run programs to help educate elderly people on the dangers of being online, how to use forums, things to look out for etc.
I checked to see if groups like U3A (https://u3amelbcity.org.au/) ran courses on it and it doesn’t look like it.
People tend to pick up weird nearly superstitious ideas about how to protect themselves, while skipping the bits that are actually helpful. I’m not sure that you can prevent that, it’s just the way people are.
Isn’t this the point of education though? To sift through the giant mess of information available out there and help people access the useful stuff? There will always be those, such as conspiracy theorists, who fall through the cracks but I don’t think this is a reason to just write off any and all attempts entirely. I believe most people are definitely capable of a) improving their technological literacy and b) developing safer habits with the right guidance.
The problem with that approach is people don’t engage with the education efforts, and if they learn anything it tends to be incomplete and often not helpful. Like people who hear about the Marketplace scams and believe PayID is an unsafe payment method, rather than realising that it is a scam involving fake PayID messages. People tend to pick up weird nearly superstitious ideas about how to protect themselves, while skipping the bits that are actually helpful. I’m not sure that you can prevent that, it’s just the way people are. Making it possible for people to speak to real people at banks and institutions, through communication channels they understand, would have to be a start though. Pushing people to navigate through various constantly changing systems of messaging, chatbots and voice recognition phone systems is just creating more vulnerability.
I remember about… 20-25 years ago I used to run programs to help educate elderly people on the dangers of being online, how to use forums, things to look out for etc. I checked to see if groups like U3A (https://u3amelbcity.org.au/) ran courses on it and it doesn’t look like it.
Isn’t this the point of education though? To sift through the giant mess of information available out there and help people access the useful stuff? There will always be those, such as conspiracy theorists, who fall through the cracks but I don’t think this is a reason to just write off any and all attempts entirely. I believe most people are definitely capable of a) improving their technological literacy and b) developing safer habits with the right guidance.