I recently received an app with the text: “Hi Dad, I have switched providers and have a new telephone number. Can you send me a WhatsApp message on…” A link followed with a number and the addition: “Old number can be removed.”
This must be my daughter, I thought. I didn’t feel like sending that WhatsApp message and decided to dial the number from the app – then we could talk about it. But there was no answer. Then I called my daughter on that ‘old number’.
“Hi dad,” she said.
“You wrote that you took a new number,” I said.
“A new song? How do you come up with that?”
“You wrote that yourself.” I read the text to her.
“But Dad – what is this? I didn’t write anything. You fell for it. This is a very old scammer’s trick. You didn’t click on that link, did you?”
“I don’t believe it,” I said, breathing hard. “No, I just called that number. What could have happened if I had typed that link?”
“Then they could have just crawled into your system and possibly retrieved all kinds of bank details. Are you sure you didn’t press that link?”
“Yes…” I sighed. I was still short of breath. The fact that someone could just creep into my ‘system’ without being asked was an extremely unpleasant suggestion that I never thought possible. To me it seemed more like a task for the general practitioner for prostate examination. Was I really sure that I hadn’t pressed that link? I concealed my doubts.
“Dad, do me a favor. If you receive these types of apps or emails from now on, stay away from them and call us immediately.”
Obediently, I promised to get better. This is what happens as the ages progress – a complete role reversal. Where does it end? That from now on Dad will have to consult his children with every more or less important decision? Be happy, I barked to myself, that they are so concerned. I remembered another conversation with the same daughter about fake police officers who can ring the doorbell and then invade my system in a completely different way… Wow, it was almost time for the classic-rhetorical question: what kind of world do we actually live in?
I now became too fatalistic and considered a practical solution. If things got out of hand and I became an easy target for every bastard – what then? After some consideration, it turned out that, apart from death (“that is always possible”), there was only one sufficient solution: under guardianship.
What exactly did that mean again? I looked it up and it didn’t disappoint me. If the judge places you under guardianship, you must leave all important decisions about financial and personal matters to a curator. The measure is intended to protect people from themselves, especially those who have “a physical or mental disability.”
I thought it would be great if I were finally rid of all those “important decisions”. But for me as a columnist it would of course be better if it did not leak out, for example via some private app, to the readers of NRC.
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