How can I retrain the algorithms to stop trying to scam my mom?
February 4, 2024 9:54 AM Subscribe
My mom gets all sorts of scammy or fake "news" stories and ads, usually AI of people selling either crypto or CBD. These do not set off her fakey-fake antennae and she treats all sources as equally credible, which worries me. I have access to her google account and facebook account and could log in and google whatever and click whatever. What's the best way to retrain her algorithm?
Response by poster: I have installed adblockers in the past and they always end up.interefering with something she's trying to do (on purpose) which means I have to go over and remove or pause the adblocker and it's a huge problem.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:56 AM on February 4
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:56 AM on February 4
Absent the things that will help more (mostly better training her on how to behave in dangerous places like FB and/or restricting her access to predatory content providers like FB): I'd go click on a bunch of K-pop stuff. Add in some agility dog clips, and other benign niche interests that are super popular and populated. I've had some success with this on my own FB, the basic logic is to fight obnoxious hostile content with more benign but also aggressively shared and promoted content.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:59 AM on February 4 [13 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:59 AM on February 4 [13 favorites]
To get rid of most tracking cookies, set the browser to delete all cookies each time it is closed and encourage her to close the browser at least once per day.
This will cause a slew of cookie consent popups, so install the "I still dont care about cookies" add-in to make those go away, this has a double benefit that she will not see so many pointless popups and will be less likely to click any other ones that do appear.
To make sure the browser gets closed regularly, setup a Scheduled Task in the control panel, to shut the machine down (if on) at 2am each day.
posted by Lanark at 11:08 AM on February 4 [6 favorites]
This will cause a slew of cookie consent popups, so install the "I still dont care about cookies" add-in to make those go away, this has a double benefit that she will not see so many pointless popups and will be less likely to click any other ones that do appear.
To make sure the browser gets closed regularly, setup a Scheduled Task in the control panel, to shut the machine down (if on) at 2am each day.
posted by Lanark at 11:08 AM on February 4 [6 favorites]
This isn’t what you asked, but I’d keep your eye on her cognitive health. Does she have legal paperwork in place for you or another relative taking over her affairs in the event that she becomes unable to do it herself? I’m not saying dementia’s at the doorstep or anything, but cognitive changes can be slow and it’s good to get things in place while you still have time to plan.
posted by eirias at 11:20 AM on February 4 [10 favorites]
posted by eirias at 11:20 AM on February 4 [10 favorites]
I have installed adblockers in the past and they always end up.interefering with something she's trying to do (on purpose)
What kind of things is she trying to do that can't work with adblockers? Serious question - this is something I almost never come across in my browsing (I use ublock origin). If there are legit sites she's trying to access that won't work you can whitelist them. But that should be rare. Script blockers like noscript can interfere with functionality, but that's a separate thing from adblocking.
How else is she getting these things aside from ads? Is some of this email spam, or push notifications from apps?
Is she on a computer (windows or mac?) or on an Android, iOS, or Chrome device?
Echoing eiras, it might be good to have a credit freeze and/or active credit monitoring on her accounts, go through her password hygiene especially if she does things like online banking, and so on.
It's probably important to be as non -judgemental and non-frustrated as possible about this with her, so that she's more likely to tell you about things and even ask you if something's legit, and less likely to hide things.
posted by trig at 11:33 AM on February 4 [6 favorites]
What kind of things is she trying to do that can't work with adblockers? Serious question - this is something I almost never come across in my browsing (I use ublock origin). If there are legit sites she's trying to access that won't work you can whitelist them. But that should be rare. Script blockers like noscript can interfere with functionality, but that's a separate thing from adblocking.
How else is she getting these things aside from ads? Is some of this email spam, or push notifications from apps?
Is she on a computer (windows or mac?) or on an Android, iOS, or Chrome device?
Echoing eiras, it might be good to have a credit freeze and/or active credit monitoring on her accounts, go through her password hygiene especially if she does things like online banking, and so on.
It's probably important to be as non -judgemental and non-frustrated as possible about this with her, so that she's more likely to tell you about things and even ask you if something's legit, and less likely to hide things.
posted by trig at 11:33 AM on February 4 [6 favorites]
2nding eirias. about getting your power of attourney and living will etc paperwork in order if you don't have it yet, and credit freeze is always a good idea.
In the vein of salty salticid's comment above, I have noticed that i get A LOT of retargeted shopping ads when i look at a wedding registry type vendor or a high end furniture seller 1stdibs.com, and to some degree even etsy and ebay, and zappos. YMMV, but maybe bookmark some of these pages and spend a few minutes searching for stuff that looks nice and gets a lot of paid marketing support, or have an email that you send back and forth with some product links. I have been looking for a very specific lamp that i can't really find on etsy/ebay/etc for awhile now, and's most of the ads i am seeing everywhere online for weeks at this point. Didn't buy a pair of shoes at zappos? they'll follow you for weeks!
Where is she spending most of her time online these days? you can search around for more specific advice per platform by looking for terms like Keyword Blocking, Topic blocking, Advertising Preferences, Ad Choices, etc.
I am not sure about personal FB accounts, but you are deffinitely able to Mute keywords as a brand account, and i do remember them making some ad preferences controls so that people could mute baby and parenting ads for example, if that was a painful subject. here is one recent link i found about settings for blocking Keywords on FB You can block certain topics from your suggestions on instagram, but only on the app
If email is a big spam vector, you can set up pretty aggressive filters in GMail and AOL to have stuff skip the inbox and go straight to spam. Literally no one is ever writing to my father in law about Crypto unless they are cranks. Any mention of crypto whatsoever, straight to the trash.
Also CatalogChoice.com is great for physical junkmail. Found that on metafilter searching for how to stop junk mail, there were lots of other great suggestions in that thread.
Good luck. Utterly dispicable how much scam artistry there is targeting old people.
posted by wowenthusiast at 11:47 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]
In the vein of salty salticid's comment above, I have noticed that i get A LOT of retargeted shopping ads when i look at a wedding registry type vendor or a high end furniture seller 1stdibs.com, and to some degree even etsy and ebay, and zappos. YMMV, but maybe bookmark some of these pages and spend a few minutes searching for stuff that looks nice and gets a lot of paid marketing support, or have an email that you send back and forth with some product links. I have been looking for a very specific lamp that i can't really find on etsy/ebay/etc for awhile now, and's most of the ads i am seeing everywhere online for weeks at this point. Didn't buy a pair of shoes at zappos? they'll follow you for weeks!
Where is she spending most of her time online these days? you can search around for more specific advice per platform by looking for terms like Keyword Blocking, Topic blocking, Advertising Preferences, Ad Choices, etc.
I am not sure about personal FB accounts, but you are deffinitely able to Mute keywords as a brand account, and i do remember them making some ad preferences controls so that people could mute baby and parenting ads for example, if that was a painful subject. here is one recent link i found about settings for blocking Keywords on FB You can block certain topics from your suggestions on instagram, but only on the app
If email is a big spam vector, you can set up pretty aggressive filters in GMail and AOL to have stuff skip the inbox and go straight to spam. Literally no one is ever writing to my father in law about Crypto unless they are cranks. Any mention of crypto whatsoever, straight to the trash.
Also CatalogChoice.com is great for physical junkmail. Found that on metafilter searching for how to stop junk mail, there were lots of other great suggestions in that thread.
Good luck. Utterly dispicable how much scam artistry there is targeting old people.
posted by wowenthusiast at 11:47 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]
These do not set off her fakey-fake antennae and she treats all sources as equally credible
On a non-tech level, I know people who have a strict "no solicitations" policy for phone and door-to-door appeals from strangers. Is there any chance she'd be willing or able to adopt a policy like that for internet stuff? No need to evaluate whether something's legit or not, just plain "I don't respond to ads", "I don't respond to email solicitations", etc. across the board. ("Nobody gets my credit card online except for stores A, B, and C" would also be good, if there's any chance at all of her adopting that.)
posted by trig at 12:23 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]
On a non-tech level, I know people who have a strict "no solicitations" policy for phone and door-to-door appeals from strangers. Is there any chance she'd be willing or able to adopt a policy like that for internet stuff? No need to evaluate whether something's legit or not, just plain "I don't respond to ads", "I don't respond to email solicitations", etc. across the board. ("Nobody gets my credit card online except for stores A, B, and C" would also be good, if there's any chance at all of her adopting that.)
posted by trig at 12:23 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]
Look at Fluevogs a couple of times and you'll be looking at Fluevogs for life.
posted by wintersweet at 12:40 PM on February 4 [6 favorites]
posted by wintersweet at 12:40 PM on February 4 [6 favorites]
There's a nice add-on (for Firefox, not sure about other browsers) called AdNauseum which could help: "AdNauseam quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on ad networks' databases. As the collected data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user tracking, targeting and surveillance become futile"
You could also set her search engine to DuckDuckGo to reduce Google's influence.
posted by anadem at 12:54 PM on February 4 [5 favorites]
You could also set her search engine to DuckDuckGo to reduce Google's influence.
posted by anadem at 12:54 PM on February 4 [5 favorites]
Gmail - mark things as spam; it really helps train the spam filter for everybody. If you open spam-mail, a hidden link in the mail may ping the sender and confirm it was opened, making the address more valuable to spammers. Opening mail suggests it's less spammy to gmail's algorithm. I find gmail's spam filter quite useful.
There are self-tests for is it spam/ malicious, but I'm too tired to google for any. Make it a fun game to try to catch each other up on identifying spam - gamify it, if you will; this works with seniors. I wish gmail made it easier to see the real email of the sender, but if she can learn to look hard, it can help.
I use Ad Block Plus, UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. Sometimes I have to say it's okay to proceed to a site deemed sketchy, but I have no other problems. Facebook is so much less unbearable with ad-blocking.
How old is she? Not everybody is great at being suspicious or keeps up w/ tech news. I would be cautious about using this as evidence of incapacitation, though seniors should start thinking about their plans at some point.
posted by theora55 at 1:02 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]
There are self-tests for is it spam/ malicious, but I'm too tired to google for any. Make it a fun game to try to catch each other up on identifying spam - gamify it, if you will; this works with seniors. I wish gmail made it easier to see the real email of the sender, but if she can learn to look hard, it can help.
I use Ad Block Plus, UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. Sometimes I have to say it's okay to proceed to a site deemed sketchy, but I have no other problems. Facebook is so much less unbearable with ad-blocking.
How old is she? Not everybody is great at being suspicious or keeps up w/ tech news. I would be cautious about using this as evidence of incapacitation, though seniors should start thinking about their plans at some point.
posted by theora55 at 1:02 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]
I have access to her google account and facebook account and could log in and google whatever and click whatever. What's the best way to retrain her algorithm?
If you have access to her Google account, then it might be worth playing around with the Google settings to help customize the ads or manage search history. There are options to block, report, or even like ads.
You might be able to browse around as her (or with her) for a few minutes and block some of the crypto or CBD ads and 'like' some ads more in line with her hobbies... or at least something less scammy. The evil empire isn't going to stop serving ads, but maybe if you convince them that they want to show your mom harmless ads about dog shows or gardening, then they'll wield their power a little less recklessly.
posted by Avelwood at 1:24 PM on February 4 [3 favorites]
If you have access to her Google account, then it might be worth playing around with the Google settings to help customize the ads or manage search history. There are options to block, report, or even like ads.
You might be able to browse around as her (or with her) for a few minutes and block some of the crypto or CBD ads and 'like' some ads more in line with her hobbies... or at least something less scammy. The evil empire isn't going to stop serving ads, but maybe if you convince them that they want to show your mom harmless ads about dog shows or gardening, then they'll wield their power a little less recklessly.
posted by Avelwood at 1:24 PM on February 4 [3 favorites]
The evil empire isn't going to stop serving ads
Sure it is, once you've installed uBlock Origin to stop your browser from requesting them.
Just installing that one extension is all it takes to deal with 99% of Internet security issues. I can't see the point in doubling-up on blocking functionality by using Adblock Plus as well; that's not so much belt and braces as completely adequate belt plus irritatingly big and heavy second belt.
uBlock Origin put a speed bump in the way of getting somewhere I was actually trying to go just twice in all of 2023, and both times I clicked the Go There Anyway button, and both times it turned out that I should have trusted uBlock Origin.
Seriously, anybody browsing the Web in 2024 without uBlock Origin active is doing it wrong.
Privacy Badger, noScript and similar tools cover other potential vulnerabilities and using one of those in conjunction with uBlock Origin is a good choice for well-informed people willing to put up with a few more speed bumps, but for anybody with only a tenuous grip on how the Web works, just uBlock Origin all by itself makes the browsing experience so much safer and so much less unpleasant that installing it should be a no-brainer.
Google is a big stupid puppy that desperately wants to be your friend but is simply too dim and self-centred to housetrain. Really, the only reliable way to stop it pissing on the living room carpet and chewing up the furniture is just to harden your heart to the sad puppy eyes and make it an outside dog.
posted by flabdablet at 12:49 AM on February 5 [8 favorites]
Sure it is, once you've installed uBlock Origin to stop your browser from requesting them.
Just installing that one extension is all it takes to deal with 99% of Internet security issues. I can't see the point in doubling-up on blocking functionality by using Adblock Plus as well; that's not so much belt and braces as completely adequate belt plus irritatingly big and heavy second belt.
uBlock Origin put a speed bump in the way of getting somewhere I was actually trying to go just twice in all of 2023, and both times I clicked the Go There Anyway button, and both times it turned out that I should have trusted uBlock Origin.
Seriously, anybody browsing the Web in 2024 without uBlock Origin active is doing it wrong.
Privacy Badger, noScript and similar tools cover other potential vulnerabilities and using one of those in conjunction with uBlock Origin is a good choice for well-informed people willing to put up with a few more speed bumps, but for anybody with only a tenuous grip on how the Web works, just uBlock Origin all by itself makes the browsing experience so much safer and so much less unpleasant that installing it should be a no-brainer.
Google is a big stupid puppy that desperately wants to be your friend but is simply too dim and self-centred to housetrain. Really, the only reliable way to stop it pissing on the living room carpet and chewing up the furniture is just to harden your heart to the sad puppy eyes and make it an outside dog.
posted by flabdablet at 12:49 AM on February 5 [8 favorites]
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posted by Winnie the Proust at 10:36 AM on February 4 [11 favorites]