[plonh]

Then "handshake" bit is rose colored view of the past. Scams were incredibly common in the past. Real estate, diamond and gold jewelry, and even the original "snake oil" and patent medicines, and all the classic "confidence man" scams.

[Mz]

I was not saying no one ever got burned. But life was different back then and it can make it hard for an older person to figure out how to judge things today. It is very similar to moving to a different culture. Culture shock is not evidence of incompetence. It just means the context is vastly different from what you are used to, which is throwing sand into your gears. It is kind of disrespectful to assume older people are all just incompetent and stupid and not account for the fact that the world today is dramatically different from the one in which they grew up.