Internet For Seniors

Skype commercials make grandparents seem so happy, and why wouldn’t they be?

Through the magic of the Internet, they can connect with their grandchildren and other loved ones instantly and at any time they please. If our Skype sessions went more smoothly, my grandpa wouldn’t miss me so much and he could be this happy too! Alas, they aren’t going so well and thus I’ll be spending my weekends at grandpa’s house for the foreseeable future. However, you can take a decisive step forward, “computerizing” the lives of your parents and grandparents.

After all, what use is a computer to your aging parents and grandparents if they can’t use it to make video calls and stay in touch with their children or grandchildren? But, how do we teach 20^th century people to use 21^st century technology and is it even worth it?

It is! Here’s a short list of things that can be available to your grandparents (or parents) as soon as they discover the possibilities of a modern computer:

• Virtually any newspaper with whatever font size they require is available at the click of a button without having to leave the house;
• Practically any radio station or TV channel;
• A phone book;
• Convenient tools for paying utilities, making money transfers and otherwise managing their financial lives;
• Classmate/colleague/relative searches on various social networks;

Sure, there are any number of manuals and tutorials available out there, but computers can be daunting for new users before they even open the program they want to learn about.

The biggest and most dangerous problem is likely training the uninitiated on things to avoid. The rule is simple: don’t click on anything suspicious. Your parents or grandparents may well pick up the phone and call you immediately if they accidentally launched the Registry editor or Proxy setup wizard. But how might they react to something more threatening, like a malicious web banner message announcing that they have a message or that viruses have been found on their computer?

Do you think standard Windows protection tools or basic freeware antivirus are enough to save older generations from crude but efficient social engineering ploys? Would you give those programs a test run on your personal computer by clicking on all the suspicious links and banners, clicking ‘Yes’ on every single dialog window that pops up, downloading a ‘SHOCKING VIDEO’ or intentionally succumbing to any number of other online treats? We didn’t think so!

That said, we’re sure of our products. Kaspersky Multi-Device Security has a number of special protections in place, which, when combined, provide best-in-class Internet security coverage for users at any level of computer literacy.

Firstly, turn off all unnecessary things. The newest addition to our technology portfolio is ‘Trusted Applications’ mode. Our software has a feature that allows users to run an array of safe programs and visit nearly any website while disabling all unknown downloads and installations. With this feature enabled, your system and applications and any other safe programs will run normally and be allowed to download all the updates they require, because this protection tool checks itself against our list of trusted sources of updates and websites. In other words, our software has a dynamic list of trusted sources that are deemed safe and will never be blocked. Of course, our software also has a list of untrusted sources that are deemed unsafe.

You’ll also want to enable Anti-banner and Anti-spam protection to guard the elderly from strange dialog windows as well as graphic images and other explicit content. You may also consider using parental controls. Generally parental controls (as the name implies) are used to limit children’s access to online gambling, drugs, or porn. However, it’s likely that your grandmother doesn’t want to see this content either and the Internet is a sketchy place, so you never know when that stuff might pop up. In this way, you can set up your own lists of untrusted websites and limit your parents’ or grandparents’ exposure to inappropriate content and hopefully prevent them from gifting all of their money to a person claiming to be a Nigerian prince (though, it’s practically impossible for a Nigerian prince scam to make it through all of our product’s protections in the first place).

With all these recommendations in place, these incredibly complicated machines might just become your parents’ everyday tool for business and leisure, not unlike the TV. Computers are meant to make life easier, after all. More importantly, now you can protect grandma and grandpa from the dark side of Internet and ensure their system, data’s stability and consistency.