Technology
How to safeguard your credit score in retirement as fraud and identity theft rise among seniors
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You’ve worked hard, saved smart, and now it’s time to enjoy your retirement years. But here’s the catch: your credit score still matters, even when you’re no longer applying for mortgages, car loans or new credit cards. Why? Scammers know many seniors don’t monitor their credit very often, and that makes retirees prime targets for identity theft. Due largely to increased scam attempts, financial losses for seniors reached $4.9 billion in 2024. And anyone can become a target. The good news is there are simple, powerful steps you can take right now to lock down your credit score and make sure your hard-earned nest egg is safe.
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HOW SCAMMERS TARGET YOU EVEN WITHOUT SOCIAL MEDIA
Why your credit score matters in retirement
A lot of people assume that once they stop working, their credit score doesn’t matter anymore. After all, you’re not buying a new house or car, right? Not so fast. Your credit score can still affect:
- Insurance premiums. Some insurers factor your credit into your rates.
- Retirement community applications. Senior housing and assisted living facilities often run credit checks.
- Loan approvals. You may still need financing for medical bills, home repairs or emergencies.
- Identity theft risk. A clean, unused credit file is like a blank check to a scammer.
The hands of Karin Seelmann, a 70-year-old participant of a computer course for seniors, handle the keyboard of a laptop in Hanover, Germany, Feb. 21, 2017. (Peter Steffen/picture alliance)
Keeping your credit score safe is about protecting both your financial reputation and your retirement savings.
REMOVE YOUR DATA TO PROTECT YOUR RETIREMENT FROM SCAMMERS
Step 1: Monitor your credit regularly
Even if you’re not applying for credit, you should know what’s in your file. Seniors are often the last to find out when a scammer has taken out a loan or opened a card in their name. The three big credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, are required to give you a free report once a year. Here’s the trick: thanks to recent changes, you can now get a free weekly credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com. Set a calendar reminder to check your reports once a month. Look for accounts you don’t recognize, suspicious credit inquiries or sudden drops in your score.
HOW SCAMMERS EXPLOIT YOUR DATA FOR ‘PRE-APPROVED’ RETIREMENT SCAMS
A man looking into his retirement matters. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Step 2: Place a fraud alert
If you suspect you’ve been targeted, a fraud alert makes it harder for identity thieves to open new accounts in your name. It tells creditors they need to take extra steps to verify your identity before approving anything.
- A fraud alert is free.
- It lasts for one year (you can renew it).
- You only need to contact one bureau. They’ll notify the others.
This is a great first line of defense if you’ve received scam calls, phishing emails or notice odd activity in your accounts.
A woman looking up her credit score on a laptop. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Step 3: Freeze your credit (the gold standard)
A credit freeze is the single most powerful tool retirees have to protect their credit score. Also, it’s completely free. Here’s why you should do it today:
- It blocks anyone from opening new credit in your name.
- It doesn’t affect your current accounts, score or benefits.
- You can unfreeze it anytime if you need new credit.
Since most retirees don’t apply for new loans often, a credit freeze is a “set it and forget it” safeguard. Think of it as putting your credit file in a vault.
How to do it:
- Contact Equifax, Experian and TransUnion individually (you’ll need to freeze your credit with each one).
- Provide proof of identity (usually SSN, date of birth and address).
- Keep the PIN or password they give you; you’ll need it if you ever want to lift the freeze.
HOW TO HAND OFF DATA PRIVACY RESPONSIBILITIES FOR OLDER ADULTS TO A TRUSTED LOVED ONE
A woman looking into her retirement matters on her laptop. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Step 4: Lock down your personal data online
Here’s something many seniors don’t realize: even if your credit is frozen, scammers can still target you through other leaks of personal information.
Data brokers publish your name, address history, phone numbers, relatives and even property records online. Scammers use this information to:
- Impersonate family members in “grandparent scams.”
- Craft convincing phishing messages.
- Trick banks or creditors with stolen details.
That’s why removing your personal information from these sites is just as important as freezing your credit. Doing it manually means tracking down dozens (sometimes hundreds) of data broker websites and sending formal removal requests and repeating the process every few months as your info pops back up.
Data removal services can handle this automatically, requesting removals from dozens of data brokers at a time and monitoring for re-uploads. It’s one of the simplest ways to cut off scammers at the source and keep your retirement profile off the web.
While no service can guarantee the complete removal of your data from the internet, a data removal service is really a smart choice. They aren’t cheap, and neither is your privacy. These services do all the work for you by actively monitoring and systematically erasing your personal information from hundreds of websites. It’s what gives me peace of mind and has proven to be the most effective way to erase your personal data from the internet. By limiting the information available, you reduce the risk of scammers cross-referencing data from breaches with information they might find on the dark web, making it harder for them to target you.
Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.
Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web: Cyberguy.com.
5 STEPS TO PROTECT YOUR FINANCES FROM FAMILY SCAMS
Step 5: Watch for warning signs of identity theft
Even with strong protections in place, it pays to stay alert. Here are a few red flags to watch for:
- Bills or medical statements for services you never used
- Collection calls about debts that aren’t yours
- New credit cards or loans arriving in your mail
- Denials for credit or insurance you didn’t apply for
- A sudden, unexplained drop in your credit score.
If you see any of these, act fast: file a report at IdentityTheft.gov, contact your bank or creditors and double-check that your credit freeze is active.
Kurt’s key takeaways
Retirement should be about peace of mind; you’ve earned your retirement. Protecting your credit score may not be the most exciting task on your to-do list, but it’s one of the smartest. By monitoring your credit, freezing your file, removing your data from broker sites and staying alert for red flags, you can keep scammers out of your finances and focus on enjoying the retirement you deserve. Want to take one major worry off your list? Start by having your personal information automatically pulled from the internet. It’s an easy way to reduce your digital footprint and keep your credit and your retirement fund safe.
Should more be done to protect retirees from identity theft and financial scams? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.
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Technology
Amazon.com says things are fixed after some issues with logging in and checking out
If you were having issues shopping on Amazon or loading your playlists on Amazon Music on Thursday, you weren’t alone. For over three hours today, Downdetector showed a sizable spike in people reporting issues with checkout, search, and logging in. The problem seemed to be affecting both the site and the mobile apps. But an Amazon spokesperson tells The Verge that the issues are now fixed.
“We’re sorry that some customers may have temporarily experienced issues while shopping,” Amazon spokesperson Jennie Bryant says in a statement. “We have resolved the issue, which was related to a software code deployment, and website and app are now running smoothly.”
Several Verge staffers experienced issues themselves when there were problems. Clicking through to many products produced a “sorry, something went wrong” error, and even pages that did load were not showing pricing. Users reported being repeatedly logged out of their accounts when trying to check out or load their cart. Even the parts of Amazon.com that were working seem to be loading slowly.
The company has been dealing with AWS outages in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates due to drone strikes by the Iranian military, but there has not been any word of more widespread outages in the US or elsewhere.
Update March 5th: Added comment from Amazon saying that things are fixed.
Technology
$163K in fake medical bill charges; AI uncovers it for you
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Last summer, a man’s brother-in-law suffered a fatal heart attack. The hospital bill for four hours of emergency care: $195,628.
The man’s sister-in-law was ready to pay it. He asked her to wait. He requested an itemized bill with CPT codes, the universal billing codes hospitals use, and fed the whole thing into Claude, an AI chatbot.
Within minutes, Claude found duplicate charges, services billed as “inpatient” even though the patient was never admitted, supply costs inflated by 500% to 2,300% above Medicare rates and charges for procedures that never happened. He cross-checked with ChatGPT. Both AIs agreed. He wrote a six-page letter citing every violation by name.
The hospital dropped the bill to $33,000. An 83% reduction. Zero medical training. A $20 app.
A man cross-checked a hospital bill with AI and got it reduced by some 83%. (Neil Godwin/Getty Images)
Your bill is probably wrong, too
That story sounds extreme. It’s not.
The Medical Billing Advocates of America estimates 3 out of 4 medical bills contain errors. The average hospital bill over $10,000 has roughly $1,300 in mistakes. And less than 1% of denied insurance claims are ever appealed. Hospitals and insurers are banking on the fact that you won’t check.
AI flips that equation. You don’t need to understand CPT codes or have a medical billing degree. You just need to paste.
You can use AI platforms, like ChatGPT, to spot errors or suspicious charges on medical bills. (Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The 5-minute audit
Step 1: Call your provider and request an itemized bill with CPT codes. Not the summary. The full line-by-line breakdown. You’re legally entitled to this.
Step 2: Open ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini (free versions work) and paste this:
“I’m pasting my itemized medical bill below. Please: (1) Explain every charge in plain English, (2) Flag any duplicate or suspicious charges, (3) Compare each charge to average costs, (4) Identify billing code errors or bundling violations, and (5) Draft a dispute letter I can send to the billing department. Here’s my bill:”
Step 3: Paste your bill. The AI will translate every line and tell you what looks wrong.
WOMAN SAYS CHATGPT SAVED HER LIFE BY HELPING DETECT CANCER, WHICH DOCTORS MISSED
If the AI finds errors, call the billing department and ask for a supervisor. (iStock)
Step 4: If the AI finds errors (it probably will), call the billing department and ask for a supervisor. Reference the specific codes. Hospitals resolve disputes all the time when patients show up prepared.
Pro tip: Counterforce Health (counterforcehealth.org) is a free AI tool built specifically for insurance denial appeals. Worth bookmarking.
It’s time to give your medical bills a thorough examination. The AI will see you now.
Real talk. Everybody’s talking about AI. Nobody’s showing you what to actually DO with it. My new free newsletter, Splash of AI (SplashofAI.com), gives you one trick, one tool and one “wait, I can do THAT?” moment every single week. Five minutes. Plain English. The kind of stuff that saves you time, money or both. You’ll wonder how you got by without it.
Send this to someone who is staring at a medical bill they can’t make sense of. Forward this right now. Seriously. This could save them hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and it takes less time than making coffee.
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Technology
Meta’s AI glasses reportedly send sensitive footage to human reviewers in Kenya
Meta’s AI-powered smart glasses could be sending sensitive footage to human reviewers in Nairobi, Kenya, according to an investigation by the Swedish outlets Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten. The report, which was published last week, claims Meta contractors in Kenya have seen videos captured with the smart glasses that show “bathroom visits, sex and other intimate moments.”
So far, at least one proposed class action lawsuit accusing Meta of violating false advertising and privacy laws has emerged in response to Svenska Dagbladet’s reporting, citing the company’s claim that its smart glasses are designed for privacy:
By affirmatively claiming that the Glasses were designed to protect privacy, Meta assumed a duty to disclose material facts that would inform a reasonable consumer’s decision to purchase the product. Instead, Meta hid the alarming reality: that use of the AI features results in a stranger halfway around the world watching the most private moments of a person’s life.
The Nairobi-based contractors interviewed by Svenska Dagbladet are AI annotators, meaning they label images, text, or audio, with the goal of helping AI systems make sense of the data they’re training on. “We see everything — from living rooms to naked bodies,” one worker says, according to Svenska Dagbladet. “Meta has that type of content in its databases.”
A former Meta employee reportedly tells Svenska Dagbladet that faces in annotation data are blurred automatically, though workers in Kenya say this “does not always work as intended,” and some faces are still visible. Another person reportedly tells the outlet that a wearer’s bank cards are sometimes seen in the footage they review as well.
Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses come with a built-in AI assistant capable of answering questions about what a user can see. The glasses have soared in popularity in recent years, despite growing concerns over privacy and surveillance.
EssilorLuxottica, the eyewear giant that Meta works with to develop the camera-equipped glasses, sold over 7 million of the AI-powered glasses in 2025 — more than tripling its sales in 2023 and 2024 combined. Last year, Meta made some changes to its privacy policy that keep Meta AI with camera use enabled on your glasses “unless you turn off ‘Hey Meta.’” It also stopped allowing wearers to opt out of storing their voice recordings in the cloud.
As reported by Svenska Dagbladet, the Kenya-based AI reviewers work with transcriptions as well, ensuring Meta AI provides the correct answer to the questions users ask aloud. In a statement to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton says media captured by its smart glasses “stays on the user’s device” unless they choose to share it with other people or Meta.
“When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people’s experience, as many other companies do,” Clayton says. “We take steps to filter this data to protect people’s privacy and to help prevent identifying information from being reviewed.”
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