watch their backs (and your inheritance!)

we need to teach our parents to hover…

…and i don’t mean actually levitate, although that would be a pretty cool fucking trick in and of itself.

no, i mean hover over stuff they get emailed. in case i have some non tech-savvy readers, when you get an email anything that’s off in color (links and such) you can hover over before you click on it and it’ll show you where you’re about to go. i guarantee my dad will one day be caught on one of these. he, like most older folk, have an email address. “an” as in “singular”. i have multiple ones, and while i am trying to consolidate the bulk of my online shit to a couple gmail addresses some of my e-commerce is staying right where it’s always been since it’s where i’m used to it.

take amazon for example…

…they use my personal email i’ve had since the 90’s. that’s okay. it’s where i’m USED to seeing it, which is good to know because while i get multiple emails a day from them (annoyingly) based on what i’ve even glanced at on their site or app (even more annoying) at least i know that’s where they GO. there is no other email address on my amazon account, which is good to remember when shit like this happens:

sure, i get emails on my normal address trying to SELL me shit, but this one was trying to GIVE me shit. and who doesn’t want free shit? but if you hover over any of the links, it takes you to that address you see at the bottom – which is NOT amazon. you’ll see these emails from time to time, and usually from the names most will recognize like amazon or paypal or ebay or one of the bigger banks like chase or wells fargo. but if you know to hover over shit BEFORE you click it, you can save yourself a world of grief. most old people don’t. shit, i was surprised most young people don’t (i just schooled os on this while i was writing the bit and he’s almost fourteen). so teach your parents (and i suppose your kids) about hovering – it could save you a whole mess of identity theft!