Protecting Older Adults from Identity Theft

In 2025, Americans aged 60 and older reported 201,266 complaints to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. These reports accounted for $7.7 billion in losses, marking the highest total among age groups. Older victims faced an average loss of nearly $38,500, nearly double the losses reported by younger individuals. The Federal Trade Commission’s December 2025 report to Congress estimated the cost of fraud affecting older adults in 2024 to range from $10.1 billion to $81.5 billion.

Security Challenges for Older Adults

Your parents now navigate a landscape where date of birth, mailing address, and Social Security number serve as verification keys. These details can clear a bank’s call center and register unclaimed Medicare accounts. It’s crucial for adult children to assist in securing these checks, a task often manageable in an afternoon.

Older adults may hold more accounts than younger individuals, including banks, brokerages, Medicare, Social Security, pension administrators, and mortgage handlers. Each account involves a distinct verification process, and a breach in one account exposes larger risks in others.

By 2024, reports of older adults losing more than $100,000 soared to $445 million, an eightfold rise from 2020. AI voice cloning compounds these difficulties, accounting for $893 million in scam losses in 2025, with those aged 60 and over losing $352 million. A few seconds of publicly available audio can simulate a grandchild’s voice in telephone scams targeting older adults.

Steps to Protect Your Parents

Talk with your parents before taking security actions. Help them understand each step and maintain their autonomy. Start by implementing these protective measures:

1. Credit Freezes: Freeze their credit with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Freezing credit is free and can be lifted online for new applications.
2. IRS Identity Protection PIN: Obtain this six-digit PIN from irs.gov/ippin to block fraudulent tax returns using their SSN.
3. USPS Informed Delivery: Sign up at usps.com to prevent criminals from previewing valuable mail like replacement credit cards or benefit letters.
4. Opt Out of Pre-screened Credit Offers: Use optoutprescreen.com to decline solicitations, with a permanent opt-out option by mail.

Consider adding credit monitoring for all three bureaus to detect suspicious activity sooner and decide which account to secure first.

Claim Federal Accounts

Pre-register my Social Security and MyMedicare.gov accounts for your parents. Enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) and using a trusted password manager can significantly reduce risk. Medicare Summary Notices should be reviewed with parents to identify unrecognized charges. The Senior Medicare Patrol provides free assistance for suspicious billing issues.

Credit monitoring services may alert you if personal data surfaces online, helping to assess threats and prioritize account security measures.

Prepare for Suspicious Calls

Install simple habits to avert phone scams:

• Agree on a family code word; end calls if the caller cannot provide it.
• Note what federal agencies never do—such as requesting full SSNs or payments in unusual forms—and place it by the phone. Any violation indicates a scammer.

Responding to Identity Fraud

A financial power of attorney authorizes an adult child to manage bills, disputes, and accounts for a parent. If fraud arises, take these steps:

1. Pull all three credit reports.
2. File a report at IdentityTheft.gov.
3. Set fraud alerts with credit bureaus.
4. Contact affected creditors in writing.

Some identity theft services offer fraud resolution support. They can assist in working with credit bureaus and creditors, and may provide identity theft insurance for recovery costs.

These steps do not completely prevent identity misuse but reduce the time between fraud detection and response, mitigating potential damages.