The Family Setup Kit: protect a parent's phone and accounts in one afternoon

The afternoon, step by step

1. Sit down together, with their phone and a notebook. Tell them this is the same thing you did for yourself. Write down every account and password you set up; they keep the notebook.
2. Put the phone carrier account under a PIN. Call or log in to the carrier and add an account PIN or port-out lock. This stops SIM swaps, the attack that defeats everything else.
3. Set up a password manager and move the important passwords into it. Email, bank, phone, Medicare, Amazon. Make the master password a four-word phrase they can say out loud. Add yourself as the emergency contact.
4. Turn on two-factor authentication for email and bank. Use the authenticator app inside the password manager where possible; otherwise text codes. Explain: "a code will arrive; never read it to anyone who calls."
5. Turn on the spam-call and scam-text filters. On iPhone: Silence Unknown Callers and Filter Unknown Senders. On Android: Caller ID and spam protection. Add the carrier's free scam-blocking app.
6. Freeze their credit at all three bureaus. Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Free, ten minutes each, and it stops new accounts being opened in their name.
7. Set up a family word. A word only the family knows. Any call claiming to be a grandchild in trouble has to say it. Practice once.
8. Put the rules on the fridge. Five lines: Nobody legitimate asks for gift cards. Hang up and call back on the number on the card. Never read a code to anyone. If it is urgent, it is a scam. Call me first.

The fridge sheet

What to tell them, in words that land

Not "you're going to get scammed." Try: "The people who do this are professionals and they beat bank managers and engineers every day. I set this up for myself last week. I'm doing it for you because it takes an afternoon now and it saves a nightmare later." Then do it together, not for them.