How to avoid safety traps when using mobile phones for the elderly? Remember these "iron rules"

With the development of mobile Internet, people of different ages have the opportunity to enjoy the convenience brought by digital life, including hundreds of millions of elderly people. For many elderly netizens, smartphones have become an important information and entertainment tool in their daily lives. They use their phones to watch TV series online, take photos and watch videos, chat online, scan codes to pay, and do financial management. The online behavior of middle-aged and elderly people is getting closer to that of young people. It can be said that they live like young people in the online world.

Software security issues exposed: Elderly people are the hardest hit

However, although they also enjoy the convenience brought by smartphones, unlike young users, the elderly users face more severe challenges in terms of mobile phone safety. In particular, some unscrupulous and illegal companies take advantage of the elderly’s lack of identification ability and use crooked ideas to trick elderly users into falling into traps step by step.

According to CCTV's 3.15 Gala, there is a serious problem of software in elderly people's mobile phones inducing them to download apps. During normal reading, a certain novel reading software displayed a mobile phone cleaning advertisement. After the tester clicked on it, he downloaded and installed an app called "Memory Optimizer". During the automatic cleaning process, a reminder to "clean up the mobile phone cache" continued to pop up. After clicking on it, the phone downloaded and installed "Super Cleaner". After this vicious cycle, four cleaning software settled on the mobile phone.

The picture is from the live broadcast of the "3.15" evening party

What is even more worrying is that the purpose of installing these software apps is not simple. Some mobile phone cleaning apps appear to be cleaning up mobile phone junk, but they only have extremely simple cleaning functions. They are actually secretly obtaining large amounts of information from the phone. In serious cases, they will create user profiles for the elderly, label them as a group that is "easily misled and induced", and push all kinds of vulgar, low-quality, and even deceptive advertisements and content to the elderly's phones.

The picture is from the live broadcast of the "3.15" evening party

Young consumers have a certain ability to distinguish between these rogue software ads, but elderly users are limited by their unfamiliarity with smartphones and lack of network experience and knowledge, and are often attracted to click, or even accidentally click because they cannot see clearly, thus falling into mobile phone security traps. At the very least, they download a bunch of useless software, causing the phone to become increasingly laggy and affecting the user experience. At worst, some illegal links, Trojan viruses, etc. may be implanted, causing the elderly to be deceived and even causing economic and property losses.

The picture is from the live broadcast of the "3.15" evening party

With the exposure of the 315 Gala, "Mobile Manager Pro" has been removed from Xiaomi Mall, OPPO Mall and other application markets, but we should see that similar apps are not isolated cases. The industry is generally lacking effective and strict supervision. The problem itself is difficult to be effectively solved in a short period of time. There is still a long way to go to ensure the safety of mobile phones for the elderly. In this case, as children and younger generations, young people will still shoulder the responsibility of actively guiding and educating their parents to use mobile phones correctly. Every bit of our efforts will make our parents and elders safer.

02 As children, what can we do for our elders?

In fact, in order to help the elderly avoid mobile phone traps, we might as well start from both the individual and product sides.

First of all, on the personal side, we can convey the correct APP download awareness to the elders, tell them what can be downloaded, what cannot be downloaded, or where to download, etc. We must be patient enough and actively guide the elderly to download APPs from formal channels, such as the mobile phone's own software mall, etc. Compared with web pages or internal download links popped up by some APPs, these download channels are more formal and almost no software bundled downloads occur. If conditions permit, it is best to help the elderly check their mobile phones regularly.

Secondly, compared to the "wide knowledge" of young people, the elderly pay much attention to every message that appears on their mobile phones, which also increases certain risks in using mobile phones. In particular, some illegal text messages are full of various phishing links, which often lure the elderly into taking the bait by creating some tempting, coaxing, and scary content. In this case, the elderly should be informed of the dangers of spam text messages, and stressed that no matter who sent the message, any unfamiliar link should not be clicked, and it is best not to read it at all, and just ignore it.

Third, just like the short messages that constantly appear on mobile phones, some misleading picture links and text links often pop up in mobile phone systems and applications, especially some system advertisements, system applications, and various APP opening screen advertisements. We can help the elderly turn off the system advertisements. If you encounter an advertising application that cannot be turned off, you must repeatedly emphasize the disadvantages and tell the elderly that the more colorful and exaggerated the content, the easier it is to deceive people. Don't be afraid of trouble and emphasize it repeatedly. Over time, as the elderly gain more experience, they will naturally not touch it.

The picture is from the live broadcast of the "3.15" evening party

On the product side, you can also help the elderly avoid safety hazards in using mobile phones by purchasing mobile phones from some big brands and regular channels. For example, most mobile phone products from large manufacturers have relatively sound privacy protection mechanisms, which usually classify and intercept spam messages and harassing calls. In addition, some products also pay more attention to maintaining the user experience of the elderly. Some brands of models even provide practical functions such as remote protection and screen sharing. The safety of the elderly's use of mobile phones is based on the supervision of their children. Once a bad situation occurs, the children can also intervene directly. (Of course, this also requires the consent of the elderly, and it cannot ignore the privacy of the elderly and only focus on safety issues)

OPPO mobile phone remote protection function (Image source network)

In addition, both children and the elderly themselves should establish a new concept of purchasing and using mobile phones, not aiming at "cheapness" but focusing on "safety" and "peace of mind".

When many younger generations buy mobile phones for their elders, they often have the idea that "the elderly are old and don't need too many functions, just enough is enough". Not to mention that the elderly also have the freedom to use high-configuration products, just from the point of view of smoothness, high-configuration mobile phones at least rarely have problems with freezing, and there is no need to worry about insufficient mobile phone memory. If the mobile phone experience is always good, the elderly will naturally not clean up any mobile phone garbage. In short, elderly phones are not cheap, and the elderly should follow the principles of safety and peace of mind when using mobile phones.

Finally, some words:

In real life, the elderly belong to the vulnerable group in society, and in the digital world, the elderly also belong to the vulnerable group. Compared with the carefree attitude of young people towards smartphones, the elderly have more complicated emotions when using smartphones. They hope that their digital needs can be met, but at the same time they are full of doubts and awe of this strange world. It is precisely because of their excessive concern that they fall into the trap carefully woven by illegal information and bad advertisements.

Unfortunately, there are still limited ways to better solve these problems. On the one hand, we hope that the Internet regulatory authorities will set up an effective Internet regulatory platform as soon as possible to purify the Internet environment for middle-aged and elderly people and tighten the Internet safety valve. On the other hand, we also need to start from children and younger generations, spend more time, energy and patience to guide the digital needs of the elderly and help them use mobile phones correctly. At present, under the premise that it is difficult for general policies to quickly solve problems, active communication is still the most effective means of prevention.