http://www.seniorsguidetocomputers.com/

… is extremely useful! Have a look!

SeniorNet provides online tutorials and ‘how to’ guides that you may find very useful!

These include:

• Display a personal photo on your desktop
• Email and receive attachments
• Force Quit a program
• Cell phone buying guide

This article by Stephanie Miles from http://www.caring.com/articles/elder-protection gives a neat summary:

When it comes to scoping potential victims, experts say con artists tend to look for individuals who are home during the day to answer fraudulent telemarketing calls, retired people who are hoping for one more shot to increase their nest egg, and those who will be too proud to admit they were “had” and report that they were victimized to the authorities.

Sound like anyone you know?

Older adults are widely acknowledged to be frequent targets of financial scammers. According to a recent survey by the Better Business Bureau, nearly 30 percent of all fraud victims are over the age of 65. Don’t feel paranoid if you’re worried that your parents or other family members may fall victim to fraud — you’re just being prudent.

Fortunately, there are a number of steps you can take to reduce the chances your family will be victims. Here are some of the most prevalent frauds and ways to help protect the people you care about.

Telemarketing fraud

Telemarketing fraud is probably the most common scam of all. Shady marketers may call the older adults in your family to hawk investment schemes, vacation clubs, or sweepstakes plans, and then pressure them to sign up immediately because the offer is only good for a limited time. Often these marketers will demand some kind of up-front investment or fee to participate, which is always a red flag that the caller is not on the up-and-up.

You can warn your older family members to not give out any personal information or credit card numbers, or otherwise buy anything from anyone over the phone. Some older people have a harder time hanging up on obnoxious salespeople because they don’t want to be rude. If this is the case with your loved ones, get them a phone equipped with Caller ID so that they simply don’t have to pick up unless they recognize the number of the caller. Also, make sure their phone number is registered with the national Do Not Call registry, which will significantly cut down — if not eliminate altogether — the number of telemarketers calling their home.

Internet Fraud

Whether it’s a phishing scam — e-mails designed to trick people into revealing personal information, including passwords to banking sites — or the well-worn Nigerian banking frauds, the Internet is rife with scam artists looking for potential victims.

To protect your family members online, make sure they know not to give out personal information to strangers, download e-mail attachments from people they don’t know, or click on links from unsolicited e-mail offers. Check to ensure that their antivirus software is installed and up to date, which will help protect them from inadvertently downloading malicious programs designed to collect personal information from their computers. And set their spam filters and Internet browser security settings to the highest levels possible.

Identity Theft

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the U.S., according to the Federal Trade Commission, so it’s a good idea to be wary about thieves stealing your loved ones’ personal information, such as their Social Security number or their bank or credit card account numbers and passwords. With this information, identity thieves can open new accounts, rack up charges on credit cards, empty bank accounts, and generally wreak havoc on their bank balances and credit ratings.

One way to prevent identity theft is to sign up your parents or other family members for credit monitoring services such as Experian and Identity Guard, which will alert you or them to any suspicious activity in their credit file, including applications for new credit or even suspiciously large spending on any existing accounts (most major credit card companies offer similar plans). These services can catch identity thieves before they do much or any damage.

Fraudulent Investment Schemes

Another scam to look out for involves calls and mailers for so-called “free” investment seminars, where your family members will likely be strong-armed into signing up for some type of investment scheme, regardless of whether it actually makes sense for their personal situation. These seminars — usually lunches and dinners at local hotels — promise advice about retirement investing, estate planning, or some type of dubious investment, and they may require a hefty up-front fee to attend.

If your loved ones work with a financial planner, ask their advisor to explain to them that these seminars are usually a gigantic waste of time and money. Make sure they know not to invest their money in anything without getting independent third-party advice.

Many people are taken in by investment schemes brought to them by friends and neighbors who claim to have already hit it big. That’s why it’s important to pay attention when your loved ones mention new friends who know a lot about money or are great investors. Remind them not to make any investments or estate planning changes without running the numbers by their trusted financial advisors.

Stay on Top of Things

Perhaps the most important way to ward off con artists is to simply remain involved in your family members’ day-to-day lives. If you live nearby, stop by their house often to check in. Take a glance at their mail to see if they’re receiving more than their share of sweepstakes offers, travel and vacation club invitations, and investment solicitations. Check their caller ID logs to find out if they’re being inundated with telemarketing calls.

If there’s an increase in these types of junk mail, e-mail spam, and phone offers, it may mean they’ve already fallen for some type of scheme and have been added to a marketer’s database of potential victims.

Also, if they have any household help, like home health aides, make sure you meet them and are occasionally at the house when they’re working. Because they often have access to sensitive personal data, household workers are occasionally the culprits when older adults are the victims of fraud. When hiring any employees who will have access to personal information, be sure to run a credit check or go through an agency that will run a more thorough background check.

If you’re suspicious of a charity or company hounding someone in your family, check with the Better Business Bureau to see if they have a record of complaints. Likewise, check with your state Attorney General to see if there are any criminal actions or complaints against the firm your loved ones are considering doing business with. The best place to report investment fraud is through the Securities and Exchange Commission. {Or in Australia, ASIC}.

Computers are not like washing machines or old cars… if you have a late model computer, it will be very difficult for you to make it malfunction.

Don’t stress about which button to press and when – in most cases, it is best to just have a go.

If you click on the wrong icon or button, or if you type the wrong thing somewhere, there are a few things you can do to get right back to where you want to be:

1. Hold down “Ctrl” on the keyboard, and press “Z” on the keyboard whilst still holding down Ctrl. This is the ‘undo’ function in many programs, and will undo whatever it is you’ve just done! This is particularly useful for word processing, when you accidentally make everything turn purple, or delete everything on the screen by accident.

2. If you have opened up a program that you no longer want, or was opened accidentally, just click the X in the top right of the screen. This will close the program. Don’t worry, if you have been writing something you wish to keep, you will be prompted to save the work first before the program actually closes completely.

3. If you’re on the Internet and you visit a site you do not want to be at, click the ‘Back’ button – the left-facing arrow usually in the top left of the screen. If you can’t go back this way, just close down the Internet program by clicking the X in the top right corner, re-open it in the normal fashion and try again!

4. Have patience! Sometimes websites and computers themselves take a long time to complete certain tasks. Don’t wait all day, but remain calm as the complicated functions are completed by your machine.

The principles in the articles are largely the same for other browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari etc), so it’s worth having a look!

Click on the underlined title below to open the article you wish to read…

Web Browsing Basics

•	Find and Return to Web Pages You’ve Recently Visited With the Internet Explorer 6 History list, you can find Web sites and pages that you’ve visited in the past so you can go back for more.

•	Preview a Web Page Before You Print It The Print Preview feature lets you see the Web page before you print it so you can avoid printing mistakes. Find out more about using Print Preview.

•	Use Favorites to Get Around the Web The Favorites list puts Web sites you visit often within easy reach. Learn about all the ways you can use the Favorites feature to browse like a pro.

•	Find Stuff Fast with Search Internet Explorer 6′s built-in search feature, Search Companion, can help you track down what you’re looking for online. Start searching now.

Are you growing tired of failed blind dates and fix-ups that usually end miserably? Are you losing hope in finding that perfect partner to live with you and care for you for the rest of your life? Most probably, you’re ready to throw your hands up in the air right now and preparing yourself for all those long and lonely nights alone forever. If you’re about to, then don’t do it yet. There’s still one reason not to and this is something that might work since its success rate is higher than traditional means:  the senior online dating sites.

Senior online dating is gaining popularity among techie seniors nowadays; maybe because it’s convenient for seniors with limited range of motion and for those who don’t have much time on their hands to do socializing more often. Online dating proves to be a great way to meet new people in and out of the city you’re currently living in. Senior online dating sites are communities for single seniors looking for potential partners in life and are quite ready for love–again.

It’s quite amazing to see eligible seniors populate these sites. This also brings hope to single seniors who are still searching for love but haven’t found it yet. All you need to do is sign up and become a member of reputable online dating services, post your profile and join community forums to have a good grasp of what’s going on. Even if you don’t go looking for a date yet, someone’s bound to find you.

Although there are horror stories surrounding online dating, not to mention the existing notion that this activity is for young, free and reckless singles only, its success rate is quite high and it’s not bad to give something new like this a try. As with any other modes of dating, there’s danger; and quite frankly, some even find online dating safer than going out with a complete stranger. When you meet someone over online dating sites, you’ll be able to test the waters first before actually going out with that particular person. These dating services simply open up new horizons and offer a lot more choices to choose from.

There are many senior online dating sites out there that you can join; some of them are for free but you may want to stick with paid ones which guarantee quality, serious love seekers and of course, for safety reasons—the fee is not that expensive anyway. Here are some precautions before joining senior online dating sites:

• Beware of lurking scammers waiting for the perfect prey. Although there are hundreds of eligible seniors listed to the site, expect half of them to be perverts; double that number if it’s a free site. The golden rule around these sites is never to trust anyone until you’ve tested their credibility.
• Be sure to check the site’s membership fees and extra charges. Read fine lines and small prints thoroughly before signing in your credit card number. Internet safety experts always recommend applying for separate online-payment processor such as Paypal just for these types of activities. The same goes for email accounts.

If you want to get into online dating in Australia, the following sites may be useful for you (but be warned, we have not checked them for reliability or legitimacy, so make sure you exercise a degree of caution):

• SoulMades.com.au
• MatchFinder.com.au
• OasisActive.com.au

Also be extremely wary of people who ask you for your contact details within the first conversation or two. Chances are they’re an unscrupulous individual trying to sell your personal details to a marketing company or similar, or perhaps they’re after far more than that (access to your bank account or identity itself!).

Don’t let those cautionary words dissuade you though. If you are wise, Internet dating can open up a whole new world of fun for you!

Although ISP plans with very small data quotas are becoming less common, if you told the salesperson that you did not intend to use the Internet very frequently, you probably have not signed up for a high data quota (>5gb/month).

It is absolutely critical that you know how much data you are allowed to consume per month, or you may incur substantial excess data usage charges from your ISP. Optus charges in excess of $0.15/ Mb that is used over the data quota in a given billing cycle – and to give you an idea of how quickly that can add up, just one video watched on Youtube can be more than 30Mb – 30 x $0.15 = $4.50.

If you, your children or your grandchildren are sitting on the computer for hours watching videos on Youtube, this $4.50 can easily be multiplied by 10 or even 20… $4.50 x 10 = $45.00.

If this happens each day, without even knowing it you may be in for a terrible shock at the end of the month.

So, this is what you should do without delay:

1. Call your ISP and ask them how much data you are entitled to per month… you can find their phone number by visiting their website now – and you can find their website by typing in their name into the white box in the middle of the webpage www.google.com;

2. Do some research as to how much data videos on the Internet typically use, and conduct some calculations to find out if your data plan is suitable, if it isn’t, negotiate with your ISP for another plan;

3. Insist that your ISP telephones you with a courtesy call when you are almost over your data quota. They will almost certainly decline this request, but it’s worth a shot! Most ISPs will send an e-mail to you to warn you that you’re at perhaps 80% of your data quota and to be wary, so make sure your ISP does this, and that you are regularly checking your e-mail.

4. Be ready to change your data plan with your ISP as you become more Internet-savvy.

The Internet is a HUGE place, and there’s no need for your fun/work/research to be limited simply because you’re on a tiny data plan (<5gb/ month), especially when prices for Internet access are plumetting everywhere.

The ‘Back‘ button.

The button looks like this if you use Internet Explorer:

Click the Back Button in Internet Explorer to get out of trouble!

Or this if you use Google Chrome:

Click the Back Button to get out of trouble in Google Chrome

… and it will look slightly different in other web browsers (web browsers are the programs that are used to look around the Internet).

If you find yourself at a website that you do not want to be at, simply click the ‘Back‘ button – the left-pointing arrow near the top of your screen, usually on the left.

Click it once, and you will return to the last page you were at. Click it once more and you will move back another page in history… every time you click it, you will retrace the steps of your latest Internet browsing session.

The ‘Back’ button can do this because in most situations your computer records every website you visit, especially for the purpose of revisiting them later!

So, if you find yourself at a site filled with nudity when you hoped to be looking at a spicy recipe for food, or an online casino when you were trying to find the bus timetable, simply click the ‘Back‘ button, and keep clicking it until you return to familiar ground.

Also, the ‘Home’ button will take you right back to your Home Page – it’s another useful way out of trouble on the Internet.

Finally, if you accidentally click the Back button, click the Forward button – the right-facing arrow sitting right next to the Back button!

Click here for a full history of the Internet’s genesis… very interesting reading!

This is what only a tiny part of the Internet looks like...