Rethinking scams to protect the people you love
In 2025, adults 60 and older lost $7.7 billion to fraud, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Three in four of them faced a scam attempt in the past two years. Much of that fraud occurred when they clicked on a malicious link, something that takes an average of 21 seconds to do, according to Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report. Obviously, older adults are a target, but not in the way you might think.
Low-hanging fruit?
Older adults are widely believed to be ‘low-hanging fruit” but scammers know differently. Multiple studies in the US and Europe have demonstrated people over 50, and even more over 70, simply don’t trust text and email outreaches from strangers. They are more likely to ignore those approaches. They are less likely to answer a call from an unknown number, more protective of dwindling personal savings. It’s the caregivers, ages 35 to 55, that are likely to have spent decades online more and susceptible to phishing emails and fake login pages.
That gap is exactly what scammers count on, and generative AI has made it easier than ever to exploit. According to IBM X-Force research, generative AI has cut the time it takes to build a convincing phishing email from roughly 16 hours to about 5 minutes, which means attackers can now produce far more of them, aimed at far more people, tailored to sound exactly like the bank, the grandchild, or the government agency someone’s expecting to hear from.
Seniors are more likely to surf the internet looking for affordable treatments for disease and aging. Social media platforms are also highly used and referred to by people over 60. According to Meta estimates, half the population over 65 is active on Facebook and Instagram. That’s where a problem exists. Seniors look for information on tech support, health care, investment information, in that order, according to the FBI. They are susceptible to fake websites for government information particularly related to Medicare and that’s where they sign up for texts and emails.
The click that matters.
Email filters catch some things before they reach an inbox. Antivirus software cleans up after an infection. Almost nothing is built for the specific instant someone is deciding whether to click, log in, or hand over information, which is the exact gap Haven was built to sit in.
Haven is a Chrome browser extension, free for individuals, that checks links before someone clicks them, whether they showed up in an email, a search result, or a message, and flags spoofed senders and lookalike login pages without ever reading the contents of anyone’s email. On sensitive sites like banking, it quietly pauses other browser extensions so nothing else can read what’s being typed, then turns them back on once the person moves on.
Haven is not the browser police. We’re not here to lock things down or tell people what they can and can’t do. We’re here to come alongside someone when they look at a link, or land on a site, and give them a reason to trust it, or a reason to pause.
That’s a meaningfully different approach than “catching everything.” No tool does that, and any that claims to is overselling. Haven sits right at the moment a decision is made, by the people most targeted and least protected.
For the specific scam patterns to watch for in your own family, and exactly what to do if something’s already happened, our companion guide, How to Protect Your Parents from Online Scams, walks through it step by step.
You don’t need to sit next to a parent while they browse to help protect them. You need something quiet, already there, doing that job in the background. Haven is free for individual use, and it takes about two minutes to add to a browser, theirs or yours.
Learn more or install Haven for your family at starthaven.com/family.
About Haven
Haven is a browser extension that helps people spot phishing links, spoofed websites, and other suspicious activity in the browser, and gives calm, clear guidance at the moment it matters. Haven is operated by MirrorTab, Inc. and is free for individual use. Learn more at starthaven.com.
Colin Britton is the chief operating officer for MirrorTab, the developer of Haven. He can be contacted at [email protected]
This content is sponsored by Haven