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Keep them offline. Get them smartphones, preferably iOS. Educate them about scams. My parents still conduct the majority of their personal business offline, and though I have scoffed at this in the past, it makes more sense for them and also keeps them safe. Their bills come in the mail, and its not uncommon for them to go to a department store and pay the bill for that chain's credit card in person. They meet with their financial advisor in person at their house, and it's someone they've worked with for decades. They keep all of their important documents (social security cards, birth certificates, passports) in a safety deposit box at a local bank. All of their insurance agents are local, and they meet with them at their cluttered, homey offices. They call the hotlines for their primary credit cards fairly often, and listen for fraudulent charges. Their online experiences are mediated through things like Facebook. They get e-mail, but I have them set up to use smart clients that filter out the most pernicious stuff. If they think something sounds fishy, they will ask me to look at it for them. Any digital documents (airline tickets, hotel reservations) they want to save go to both the Apple Cloud (which they can occasionally do, though I have to help) and to the printer so they can keep records. The only downside of this is the sheer amount of mail they receive, and the difficulty of finding hard copies of documents despite their best efforts to file things. Even their mail is somewhat protected, though, as they live in a gated retirement community. |
As much as I dislike Apple and their ecosystem, iOS is the way to go. But I went with tablets over phones, just for practicality with browsing and such.
With an iPad (as opposed to an Android tablet) I don't have to worry about them installing some fake app. It also helps a that anyone can figure out iOS (although it has gotten more complex over the years).
I've also installed Pi-hole at my parent's house. Not just to protect them from misleading stuff, but also because overly aggressive ads can be very confusing. I've once had my mom tell me her tablet was broken, because she couldn't visit the news, it turned out to be a giant overlay ad that she couldn't figure out how to close.
Lastly, I have migrated their ISP based email account (dating back to the early 90's) to a gmail inbox so they can benefit from the (mostly excellent) spam and fraud detection features of gmail. Their ISP offered no spam detection at all. It still uses the same email address though, I just routed it through gmail.
The government here in the Netherlands ran some great TV commercials instructing you to hang up the phone and call back if you got a call that you didn't trust. And another TV commercial on how to check the URL and certificate if you are on your banking website. I'm very grateful for that, it already saved my dad once from a phishing attack.