Member-only story
I Miss Giving Tech Support to My Mother-In-Law
Every year since 1998, my husband and I have traveled from the Bay Area to Montana to visit his parents for the Winter Holidays. We did this before we were married and after; when we had a baby and also when we had three babies. Some years we experienced blizzards and copious amounts of snow; other years their snowy lawn was covered in patches of grass.
The only constant was me giving my in-laws tech support.
Sometimes I was annoyed by this, but mostly I liked doing it. Last year a scammer had managed to dupe my mother-in-law into giving them access to her computer by convincing her that she’d already been scammed by someone else. We spent the day searching her computer for spyware and then brought it into a local Mac repair store just in case.
We’re not traveling to see my in-laws this holiday season and I never thought I’d say this, but I’ll miss giving them in-person tech support. I will also miss my mother-in-law’s artichoke casserole, which is amazing and not easily replicated. I have tried.
Read this story by Lance Ulanoff who describes a similar scam perpetrated against his tech-savvy mother-in-law, along with tips on how to avoid these scams and how to help your family and friends remotely.
