I've been writing an email to my family (mostly 65+ parents, retired, etc.) about how to protect themselves from email scams, etc., especially in light of the heartbleed fiasco.<p>There's often no distinction between a systemic bug (e.g. heartbleed) and an actual corporate security breach (e.g. Target). Everything is a "hack" to them. I'm not looking for "general" advice, e.g. make sure you're using https, etc. And I'm afraid this will devolve into "any non-technical user", no matter what the age. If so, that's fine.<p>Here's what I'm asking...How do you communicate this stuff to your non-tech people, whether parents, grand-parents, colleagues, etc.? Without being overcome with technical descriptions. How do we help them stay safe? Everything from social engineering (a la Kevin Mitnick) to clicking on emails from their "bank."<p>Is there a protocol, or set of "rules" you place on your loved-ones? The last thing you want is for them to call you at 2am asking for help because they've been "hacked." What strategies are you using to prevent the "2am call because they've been hacked?"
My streategy eventually became refusing to deal with it, and prodding them to develop a relationship with a local computer store - if I can't answer something in a single sentence or two, I say it's too complex to explain and they should have someone look at it. This didn't go down that well at first, until I got them to agree that they wouldn't try to fix their car this way if I was a mechanic, and trying to fix their computer without being able to see it was just as inefficient.