May 9, 2025 • 34 mins
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We sit down with John Ream, creator of SeniorShieldai, an innovative app designed to help seniors identify scam text messages and protect themselves from digital fraud. John shares his personal motivation for developing this solution after watching his father repeatedly fall victim to online scams, costing his family thousands in fraudulent charges.
• SeniorShieldai uses AI and a known scam database to analyze suspicious text messages
• The app offers three affordable pricing tiers: free, $0.99/month, and $3.99/month
• Over 100,000 seniors reported scams in 2023, with average losses of $34,000 per incident
• Total senior scam losses exceeded $3.4 billion last year in the US alone
• Educational quizzes within the app teach users how to identify common scam patterns
• The average person receives approximately 12 fraudulent text messages daily
• Family members can send "test scams" to educate their elderly loved ones
• Weekly scam alerts keep users informed about new threats
• Android version of the app currently in development
• Educational content available on SeniorShield's Instagram account
Check out SeniorShieldai at seniorshieldai.com and download the app to protect yourself or your loved ones from costly scams.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone.
This is Esther Kane and I didan interview just a few days ago
with John Ream fromSeniorShieldai.
He's the creator and founder ofan app and the website is
SeniorShieldai and, of course,the app is SeniorShield.
It's a wonderful app to try tohelp seniors, but of course,
(00:26):
anyone, I think, get awayidentify spam text and which we
all seem to be getting lately.
I've been getting for a fewtimes a week now I get a text
from the United States PostOffice addressed to my cat,
stella, who actually passed awaylast year.
(00:48):
So obviously I can tell thatthat's a scam, because why would
the post office be texting me?
There's they, you know noreason.
And two, it's addressed to mycat, so that's an easy one to
identify, but not all textmessages that come in are easy
to identify.
(01:08):
So with this great app that hecreated, you can put the message
into the app and it will letyou know if it's legit or if
it's fake.
On top of that, you know hemade the pricing extremely
affordable.
There's three models there'sthe free model, there's $0.99 a
(01:29):
month model and then there's$3.99 a month model to keep your
senior loved ones safe.
I mean, we all know thattechnology is changing so quick
it's hard to keep up.
It's hard to know what's legitand what's not anymore, at least
(01:51):
for most of us.
So stick around, take a look atthe, at the pot, at the
interview, and I hope you likeit.
Of course, you know, click thelike button, give us your
comments, subscribe to ourchannel.
We appreciate each and everysingle one of our subscribers.
I will see you next time andlook forward to your comments.
(02:15):
Take care, I'm sure you've beentalking a lot about the app.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yes, definitely it's new.
I just released it about amonth and a half ago.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Wow, how long did it take you or whomever, to create
it.
Did you create it?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I did not.
I came up with the idea andeverything myself, but I am not
a software developer.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
But I got someone to develop it for me.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Perfect.
It looks amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I built Senior Shield with the family caregivers in
mind.
Because I came up with thisidea?
Because my father he's startingto age and his cognitive
abilities are declining a littlebit and he's very susceptible
to scams.
Primarily, you have a virus onyour phone.
You need this virus protectionoh no so I saw my.
(03:12):
My dad would always fall for it.
Pay for my mom would becanceling the credit cards.
It would keep happening and I'mlike he keeps getting scammed
in the text messages.
I was like, what if I couldeducate him in the text messages
?
So that's kind of where myoriginal idea came from.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I love it.
I mean, I love that there'sthat personal history, because
you you understand the need ofthe family members trying to
protect, and not only that, butthe older adult too.
Look, you know, everyone gets.
Everyone can easily get scammedthese days, especially with ai,
who knows what to have you seenthe uh toll scams no t-o-l-l.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
The toll yeah like yeah, like you know, you missed
your toll when you went on thehighway so there's, a very
common one going on across manydifferent states right now and I
received it.
It looked very real.
I live here in boston,massachusetts, and it's like
your easy pass invoice isoverdue.
I almost clicked the link.
(04:14):
Then I'm like, wait a second.
I uploaded it into seniorshield and it told me it was a
scam.
And then I googled it and I'mlike, oh my, the creator of
Senior Shield almost just fellfor a scam.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It's so easy, yes, it's so easy.
You don't know what to.
You don't know what to believeanymore.
Honestly, even yeah, yeah.
So how exactly does the appidentify a scam?
I mean, you have to put it inthere, right?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, so the it's.
It's still new, so I don'tthink the usability it's not
perfect.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Sure Nothing.
Look, it's always evolving.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, but so there's a few different things that it
does.
One one can sign up theirparents or their family member,
friend, someone that may besusceptible to scams, and once
they sign them up, that personcan then opt in.
Then they can receive, like adaily text message of oh here's
a notification of some commonscams that are going on and
(05:18):
here's how to stay aware of itJust education in the text
messages themselves.
It just education in the textmessages themselves.
Um, another way is, inside theapp, you can upload the contents
of a message and the phonenumber or email, and what it
does then is it actually pingsacross a known scam database and
tells you if that phone numberor email are in that database
(05:41):
and if it's a known scammer, andthen, separately, it actually
reviews the content of themessage and uses AI to analyze
that message and to tell you ifit looks like a scam or not.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Right, or if it's a message that's already been
identified as a scam, or even ifit's a paragraph, I suppose, or
a sentence saying, hey, thishas been used.
Yes, well, that's a good way touse AI, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Then there's educational quizzes in it.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, how does that?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
work.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Is that like something that comes on a daily
text message or email?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
No, it's inside the mobile app.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So you'd have to open up the mobile app, take a look
at the quiz of the week, andthen you can take that quiz.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Okay.
So it's sort of like thosehealth apps where you know you
go in and it's got exercises forthe day or whatever.
Go in and see that.
Yeah, I tried putting it on myphone, but I have an Android.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I'm coming up with Android soon, but not quite yet,
so I'll be sure to let you knowonce it's available for you.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, let me know, um , because I was trying to see,
all right, how does it work?
It looks so cool.
I mean, certainly the pricepoint is great, for sure.
Yeah, you know, I only have afew paying customers right now.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
um, but you know I I'm still brand new.
It just came out a couplemonths ago and it's always a
slow start.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Right, that's okay.
I mean you need to startbuilding that up and the reviews
Look.
It takes a while, but I thinkit's a brilliant idea.
I think it's excellent for,like you said in the on your
website, not just for the olderadults, but also for the family
members who are trying toprotect their older adults.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I mean, the world's getting scary and they're
getting more advanced and it'svery difficult to decipher, like
what's a scam and what's not.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
It does?
What's the it that it's pullingwhere the scams are or what
identifying them?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
yeah, so this is it.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
I can um I was just wondering yeah, it's called ip
quality score.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Ip quality score.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
IP quality score Okay .
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So I just sent that in the chat.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So, yeah, it's a public database, but this you
know in order to actually use it, you would have to go to the
website log in, whereas my appjust has a direct API connection
to it.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah.
Right, excellent and give me anexample of what one of the
quizzes are like.
The educational quizzes, yeah,you know.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Well, let me pull it up and I can show you on that.
Yeah, that was another thing Iwas going to say.
Um, I would love to see a videoof it actually working on the
website.
I don't know if you have anarticle on that.
Did I miss it?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
No, I don't.
I don't think I've done thatquite yet.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, that would be cool to see for us, for us
visual learners.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, let me share my screen here.
Awesome, I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You're very lucky to be living in Boston.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, maybe not in the winter, but otherwise it's a
great city.
And where are you based?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I'm northeast of Atlanta.
Oh, okay 45 minutes northeastof crazy Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I like Atlanta.
I've been there for work a fewtimes.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
for work.
I work in B2B sales tech salesactually so you know I work from
home.
I'm a product expert where Igive demonstrations of the
software to prospective clients.
Cool Well so you must do it,you must work on this in the
side.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah, well, that's how.
That's how the idea of the petrock gets started.
Right, it started on the side.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, so here we have the app itself.
Let me just turn on a littletool I have.
Yeah, okay, great, so you loginto the app.
What I like to have is a weeklyscam alert where every single
week it'll be a new scam alert,so this can keep you informed of
what are some of the mostcommon scams going on.
(10:20):
So this is that one I wastalking about.
God, it takes telling you topay overdue toll charges.
You can drill in here andactually read about this scam
and how it's actually affectinga lot of people.
If you were to Google the scam,you were going to see it
everywhere.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Wow, that's amazing.
I can't believe you got thatscam on your phone.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Oh, I've gotten it like four or five times oh my
God, that is crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
It would be worse if somebody paid it and they didn't
even have one of those passes.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, I was very close to falling for it.
I'm kind of ashamed to say it,but just to say how scary that
is these days.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Well, it's how vulnerable all of us are.
Look these days, you don't know, but it looks awesome.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
It looks very user-friendly it was designed
like that in mind, because ithas to be it has to be right.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Did you use your father as a test subject?
Yeah that's great.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
That's the way to do it yeah that's great so in the
resources we I have threesections.
I'm still creating some videos.
That's going to try to helpstreamline the onboarding
process to make it as easy aspossible for end users to use
the app okay, right but for thequizzes, you know, quiz of the
(11:43):
week.
In fact, esther, we can haveyou take this quiz.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Oh gosh, Okay, I get my glasses.
Oh my God All right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Do you need that or?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
You receive an email from your bank asking you to
verify your account informationby clicking on a provided link.
What should you do?
Oh, do not click it.
And call the bank or get onyour online platform account for
the bank, but don't ever clickthe link.
Ignore the email.
(12:17):
Your bank will contact you byphone if there's an issue, well,
maybe Forward the email tofriends.
Oh, my God, no.
Submit and verify withSeniorShield.
Well, yes, obviously, if youhave SeniorShield, definitely do
.
Number four you receive anunexpected email from a friend
with an attachment and a vaguemessage.
What should you do?
(12:37):
Open the attachment.
That can be scary.
Contact your friend through adifferent method?
Well, you could do that.
Forward the email to others new.
Click the attachment andforward to friends new.
I hate attachments on emailthat and forwards a pop-up this
(12:58):
is the one my dad would alwaysfall for pop-up message appears
on your computer screen sayingyour system is infected.
Oh, with the virus, oh my god.
It's like the movie thebeekeeper.
Yes, instructs you to call aprovided phone number
immediately.
What is the best course ofaction?
Call the number immediately,unless you want to blow up the
building like a beekeeper.
(13:18):
Close the pop-up window and runa trusted antivirus scan on
your computer.
You could ignore it, it'sprobably just a harmless ad and
provide your credit card.
No, definitely not.
Number four, number two, Idon't know if you can't ignore
it, can you?
an unknown person messages,messages you on social media
(13:40):
this is a very common one yeah,and if you're on social media,
you do get that a lot expressingromantic interest.
Oh, those romance scams yeah,after a brief conversation,
that's scary.
They soon ask for financialhelp.
How should you respond?
Send them money to help out?
No, uh, stop communication andreport the profile.
(14:03):
Yeah, continue chatting.
No, well, unless you want tocatch them, ask them for
personal documents to verifytheir identity, why would you
continue?
No, yeah, number two this.
The sad truth is, I'm sure youknow, many elders get lonely
yeah, I mean, I've been a widowfor 10 years now, so and I'm 67,
(14:26):
you know, I can tell you thatit it does happen, I can see
those romance scams coming tofruition, but they're scary.
Once you know about them, youcan't trust anything.
Yeah, all you have to do iswatch one of those crime things
on TV and yeah, anyway, youreceive a letter stating you've
won the lottery.
You don't remember enteringhalf of that, but you need to
(14:50):
pay a fee to claim the prize.
What's the appropriate action?
Send the fee to claim yourwinnings.
Ignore the letter.
It's likely a scam.
Contact the lottery company toverify your win.
You could do that and share thegood news with friends and
family.
Number three, but you could donumber two as well, right, good.
(15:13):
While browsing online these areall really good good quizzes.
While browsing online, you'reprompted to fill out a survey
for chance to win a high valueprize.
Yeah, but it asks for yoursocial security number and
banking details.
Oh, yeah, what's the safest?
Provide the information nope.
Information, nope.
Only.
Provide partial Nope.
(15:34):
Decline to participate and exitthe site yeah.
Share the info with others?
Oh, that would be worse.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
The spread is high.
This is the initial quiz, and Iwanted to make this one rather
generic and high level thatspans across a number of the
most common scams that peoplesee today.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I can see that.
I mean they're great questions.
Did you come up with these orit's just a series of what your
experience and your dad'sexperience or what you're seeing
online of scams?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I came up with these questions with just knowledge
and research of the most commonscams that are affecting people,
so I figured that would be themost logical place to start.
You're absolutely right we cankind of skip through these last
ones.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, they're really great.
I can see how and then you getthe test results.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, so we have a little touching up to do and
education we should do to makesure we don't fall for any.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
That's great, though, really, I mean, you know the
two things that I think thatthat, well, there's three things
really that I think this app ishitting on is one, just the
awareness, the list of scamsthat are currently happening to
you know, know, getting this,these types of quizzes, which is
(16:57):
a way of showing you how thescam could work, so that you can
educate yourself to not fallfor it.
And then three, just the youknow the, the the alert acts
aspect of having the app on yourphone so that you can put the
possible scam in there to letyou know if it is an app.
(17:18):
Now it's on the person, it's onyour father's phone.
Yeah, you get an alert no, notquite yet okay, but that's what
you want to do.
You want to include the familyas well, or not, is?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
that invasive yeah, uh, so I'll show you something.
Um, so there's another featureof the app where I can actually
send a fake scam text to myfather or my mother yeah, and
then they'll receive a fake scamtext and if they click it
(17:55):
they'll get sent to my websitesaying you fell for a scam.
Oh okay, yeah okay um well, letme show you another way here.
Uh, another piece of the appthat's actually.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
That's actually a great idea to do, not just to
your parents, because if you didthat and then sent them to a
page on your website, you knowthis was a test.
You fell for a scam.
If you want to protect yourself, let me tell you about
SeniorShieldai.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Because I saw somewhere.
I thought I saw somewhere onyour site that there was family
member access, or did I makethat up?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Oh, I did, Okay, great.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, and so we'll connect back here.
That's my dog in the background.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
That's okay, it's my cat on the table.
That's just how it is when youwork at home.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
So yeah, here we have receive a suspicious message.
So I received this one a coupledays ago.
You've probably this is a verycommon one.
Okay, you know from USPS.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I've gotten that myself.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, so this isn't the best UI yet.
I need to make this a littlebit better.
But I just put in the phonenumber I got it from and
uploaded the message itself,press verify and now it's
telling me it's a scam.
Now the phone number wasn'tknown, but it's saying, based on
(19:51):
the contents of the message,it's a scam.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right, because it's not a known number for UPS.
Right, very good, very good.
I love it.
It's simple, it's clean andeasy to use and I like that you
have the um, the share feedback,because whenever you have
something new, I don't care whatit is a website, an article, an
(20:17):
app, anything at all you wantto get feedback from the people
who are using it, because that'show you change it, that's how
you build it and rebuild itExactly.
I mean, you know from fromselling software, from talking
about software.
It's in constant, you knowrebuilding iterating version one
(20:39):
, version 1.2, version 1.8, andso on and so on.
I mean, that's just, that'sjust the nature of it.
It's always been that way andit should be, because it's
changing with um, everything,not only technology, but how
people use it and um, and peoplecome up with all new ways to
use it.
Um, I love it.
(21:00):
So what feedback, if any?
It's so new, you probablyhaven't.
What feedback, if any, it's sonew, you probably haven't.
What feedback, if any, have yougotten from your users?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
You know, some of the feedback is make it a little
bit easier to.
People always wanted to autoreview their messages and then
immediately identify which one'sa scam.
Apple has blocked the abilityto do that actually yeah, okay
you know, like security andprivacy concerns, so I can't do
(21:33):
that with Apple.
I might be able to do that withAndroid, though.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Okay.
So what they're saying is, ifthey get a message, let's say in
their email that Senior Shieldwould automatically flag it.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Oh, so they don't want to take the extra step to
put it into the app?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Well, everybody wants the automatic toilet.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, you know, there's always the automation
that people want.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
But for Apple not quite there.
I don't even know if we everwill get there.
Android it's possible, becausethey have looser uh security uh
regulations on their phones.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, yeah, but it would be difficult because
you're not only targeting emails, you're also targeting text and
you're also targeting browser.
I I mean, that would be a lotyeah.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
When I was first coming, before the idea was even
developed, I posted about it onReddit.
There's this guy named Liamthat had to respond and I
actually spoke with him becausehe's a product software
developer used to work forGoogle and I spoke with him and
he developed something similarlyfor a google chrome plugin that
would crawl across your emailand manage the sites that you're
(22:50):
viewing, to help do a verysimilar process, because his
grandmother was getting scammed.
Oh, you're hitting upon a somefuture functionality of senior
shield to do that, but I don'thave that yet yeah, well, you
will.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I mean, there's over 10 000 people a day turning 65
and that's going to continue, Ithink, until 2030, I think, and
then past that, uh, the next 10years are going to be the next,
uh, demographic, the nextgeneration turning six.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
So you, yeah, there's uh, the market is there, um you
know how many um scamcomplaints there were by seniors
over the age of 60 in uh 2023no, tell me over 100 000 in the
us oh my god, and those are theones that actually complain.
(23:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Never mind the ones that didn't say anything.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
The average scam amount was $34,000.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
What if people don't?
Speaker 1 (23:56):
have any money for aging in place.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Over $3.4 billion in fraudulent scams for seniors in
2023.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Wow, it's an astronomical number.
Wow, that is definitelysomething to be, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
In the average person .
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I had no idea it was that high.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Upwards of 12 scam or fraudulent text messages a day.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Well that I know the number of messages, but I had no
idea and I had no idea that theaverage loss of uh, the scam,
you know the scammed person was34 000.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I have a friend who just got scammed out of 13 000,
um wow when I was opening up thebank account, I was at like my
local chase branch and I wastelling the banker about my
business and he was telling mehe's like every single week I
see a senior getting scammed.
He's like just last week therewas one that fell into like lost
(24:58):
over a hundred thousand dollarsdue to a crypto scam.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Oh, my god, oh my god , it's gonna.
You definitely have potentialto grow with this.
You know, besides the, thegoogle guy that you were talking
about earlier is are there anyother um apps or programs that
you know of that are similar?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I've come across a couple similar ones, but they
don't really have too much of afollowing at all.
I actually noticed that McAfeeAntivirus.
They came out with somethingsimilar to auto detect scams.
I don't know exactly how itworks, but that's targeting more
of the overall market foridentifying scams as opposed to
(25:45):
educating seniors.
I thought about starting it forbeing broader, but I thought
that maybe having a niche that Istuck to to educate may be the
best way to start out.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, it is Build that I mean.
The one thing I've learned ininternet marketing for 25 plus
years is stick with a niche,really build it up, get your
authority in that niche, andthen you can start playing
around by adding other thingsand you can just, yeah, just
create a new company with thesame product, market it
(26:20):
differently.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That's what.
I was.
Right, exactly what do you?
(26:42):
What would you like to see anyadditions?
The app, I mean.
You know I've heard some people.
You know there's a lot of appsout there for the senior market
on a whole, whether it's fromreminders to take your
medication, assistance ingetting to your doctors or
managing all your healthinformation.
Obviously, I'm focused on scams, but, you know, if there's a
(27:05):
need to broaden outside of justscams, make it more all for one
solution, I would never beopposed to that.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Okay, that makes sense.
Instead of having 20 apps doing20 different things, combine it
all.
Yeah, that would make sense andthat certainly would be very
user-friendly.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Well, there's enough services out there that you
could tack on to.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
As you will notice, as your father gets older and
mother.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
I know I've been through that.
I've been through that myself.
Well, I think you know onething.
I do want to say what I ask you, I'm sorry.
Do you feel that there are, orhave you discovered that there
are, any challenges that you'refacing with this app, besides
just the marketing?
Are there any issues that youfound that you're hitting the
(28:00):
wall on?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
So sometimes with the mobile app when you send a fake
scam message, it doesn't alwaysit's not always embedded with
the hyperlink okay, um, alsolike if I were to add my father,
he would receive a text messagesaying like oh, john ream sent
(28:22):
you, uh, signed you up for this.
Click here to download the appand opt in.
That doesn't always have ahyperlink either.
I've noticed through testingwith end users that that link
doesn't always hyperlink, sothat makes it a little difficult
to understand.
So I'm trying to figure out whythat's the case.
But these are all minor things,but they're not perfect for the
(28:46):
end user experience.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
No, no, but it sounds like it's a coding issue.
You know, a technical issue,right?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I'm working with my developer on those things.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, and, like I said, it'll always be growing.
Well, it's a beautiful site.
Yeah, well, they did a good job, thank you.
I mean you're, you know, yougot everything on there that I
can see.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Did you take a look at my Instagram account?
Speaker 1 (29:12):
At your what account?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Instagram.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
No, not yet why.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Oh, I think there's some fun content on my Instagram
.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Oh, okay, I am going to check you out.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I can also share my screen and show you.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
There we go.
Oh, I see the 3.4 billion.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Wow, is that your father?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
No no.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
I see somebody there.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
But yeah, just you know a lot of education about
the marketplace, thoughtleadership, you know just trying
to tell people who SeniorShield is, what we stand for,
how we're trying to help.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
At the end of the day , that's what it's all about,
and you know I have a.
Do you have a YouTube channelas of yet?
Speaker 2 (30:12):
I've created one, but I haven't uploaded any videos
to it yet.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Okay, you'll find.
You know I have two YouTubechannels, one for each of the
websites, and I mean that took awhile to to gain traction, but
once it once it did.
It's so wonderful to get thereplies, um comments from people
(30:35):
saying, oh, this was so veryhelpful, thank you.
This just happened to my mother.
You know this really helped.
I mean you get a lot of, youknow, strange, weird ones too,
but the helpful ones are thegrateful ones.
It really fills your heart andit really makes you feel like,
okay, you know, those 18 hours Ispent in front of the computer
(30:56):
really are worthwhile.
So I think you'll get that too.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
And I just read that Instagram just passed as the
second most used search engineover youtube really yeah, so
keep market, keep marketing oninstagram I'm building up my
base just by building up somefollowers and you know I'm going
to keep posting and you know,hopefully, uh, you know,
(31:24):
hopefully I'll be able to helpsome people not get scammed yeah
, as long as the information isuseful, eventually it'll get to
where it needs to get to well, Imean, you know, I think your
podcast is great.
I was taking a look at it oh,thank you it all comes down to.
Education is just so important,but sometimes it's hard to get
that education to the ears thatneed to hear it.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
It is.
It is.
I mean, sometimes I feel likeI'm pulling a donkey across the
road.
You know you have that infothere.
You want to give it to them,but they just don't seem to.
Well, you know, aging is veryemotional.
It's emotional admitting you'regetting older.
It's emotional you can't do asmuch as you you know you could
(32:07):
um.
And then it's emotional for thefamily members watching their
loved one going through thatprocess it.
You know you're fighting somany issues and in aging in
place issues.
The second factor is is cost.
Usually a lot of homerenovations cost a lot of money.
So that's why I really lovetools, you know, like the Senior
(32:29):
Shield app, where it'sextremely affordable and it's so
user-friendly.
And look if it can save you$34,000, what the hey?
That's a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
It's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
That's a lot of money .
It's a lot of money.
So I think that it's yeah, it'sgreat, it's great.
Oh, I thank you so much, John.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Thank you for your time and it was so great to meet
you and I'm really lookingforward to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Well ditto.
Yeah, I can't wait to showcasethis.
I'm going to start writing thearticle right away and let them
know that the podcast is coming.
And, yeah, maybe I'll put itahead of the schedule.
I know we have a schedule, butmaybe I'll do that because it
was really good, thank you.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to talking toyou again.
(33:18):
I look forward to seeing howthis thing improves.
I can't wait for it to get onAndroid.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, I will let you know once it does.
I was speaking with mydeveloper yesterday, so that's
next up all right, cool.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Well, you have an awesome day, enjoy boston, and I
will talk to you later have agreat day take care, thank you.
Hi everyone.
This is Esther Kane and I didan interview just a few days ago
with John Ream fromSeniorShieldai.
He's the creator and founder ofan app and the website is
SeniorShieldai and, of course,the app is SeniorShield.
It's a wonderful app to try tohelp seniors, but of course,
(00:26):
anyone, I think, get awayidentify spam text and which we
all seem to be getting lately.
I've been getting for a fewtimes a week now I get a text
from the United States PostOffice addressed to my cat,
stella, who actually passed awaylast year.
(00:48):
So obviously I can tell thatthat's a scam, because why would
the post office be texting me?
There's they, you know noreason.
And two, it's addressed to mycat, so that's an easy one to
identify, but not all textmessages that come in are easy
to identify.
(01:08):
So with this great app that hecreated, you can put the message
into the app and it will letyou know if it's legit or if
it's fake.
On top of that, you know hemade the pricing extremely
affordable.
There's three models there'sthe free model, there's $0.99 a
(01:29):
month model and then there's$3.99 a month model to keep your
senior loved ones safe.
I mean, we all know thattechnology is changing so quick
it's hard to keep up.
It's hard to know what's legitand what's not anymore, at least
(01:51):
for most of us.
So stick around, take a look atthe, at the pot, at the
interview, and I hope you likeit.
Of course, you know, click thelike button, give us your
comments, subscribe to ourchannel.
We appreciate each and everysingle one of our subscribers.
I will see you next time andlook forward to your comments.
(02:15):
Take care, I'm sure you've beentalking a lot about the app.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yes, definitely it's new.
I just released it about amonth and a half ago.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Wow, how long did it take you or whomever, to create
it.
Did you create it?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I did not.
I came up with the idea andeverything myself, but I am not
a software developer.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
But I got someone to develop it for me.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Perfect.
It looks amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I built Senior Shield with the family caregivers in
mind.
Because I came up with thisidea?
Because my father he's startingto age and his cognitive
abilities are declining a littlebit and he's very susceptible
to scams.
Primarily, you have a virus onyour phone.
You need this virus protectionoh no so I saw my.
(03:12):
My dad would always fall for it.
Pay for my mom would becanceling the credit cards.
It would keep happening and I'mlike he keeps getting scammed
in the text messages.
I was like, what if I couldeducate him in the text messages
?
So that's kind of where myoriginal idea came from.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I love it.
I mean, I love that there'sthat personal history, because
you you understand the need ofthe family members trying to
protect, and not only that, butthe older adult too.
Look, you know, everyone gets.
Everyone can easily get scammedthese days, especially with ai,
who knows what to have you seenthe uh toll scams no t-o-l-l.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
The toll yeah like yeah, like you know, you missed
your toll when you went on thehighway so there's, a very
common one going on across manydifferent states right now and I
received it.
It looked very real.
I live here in boston,massachusetts, and it's like
your easy pass invoice isoverdue.
I almost clicked the link.
(04:14):
Then I'm like, wait a second.
I uploaded it into seniorshield and it told me it was a
scam.
And then I googled it and I'mlike, oh my, the creator of
Senior Shield almost just fellfor a scam.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It's so easy, yes, it's so easy.
You don't know what to.
You don't know what to believeanymore.
Honestly, even yeah, yeah.
So how exactly does the appidentify a scam?
I mean, you have to put it inthere, right?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, so the it's.
It's still new, so I don'tthink the usability it's not
perfect.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Sure Nothing.
Look, it's always evolving.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, but so there's a few different things that it
does.
One one can sign up theirparents or their family member,
friend, someone that may besusceptible to scams, and once
they sign them up, that personcan then opt in.
Then they can receive, like adaily text message of oh here's
a notification of some commonscams that are going on and
(05:18):
here's how to stay aware of itJust education in the text
messages themselves.
It just education in the textmessages themselves.
Um, another way is, inside theapp, you can upload the contents
of a message and the phonenumber or email, and what it
does then is it actually pingsacross a known scam database and
tells you if that phone numberor email are in that database
(05:41):
and if it's a known scammer, andthen, separately, it actually
reviews the content of themessage and uses AI to analyze
that message and to tell you ifit looks like a scam or not.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Right, or if it's a message that's already been
identified as a scam, or even ifit's a paragraph, I suppose, or
a sentence saying, hey, thishas been used.
Yes, well, that's a good way touse AI, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Then there's educational quizzes in it.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, how does that?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
work.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Is that like something that comes on a daily
text message or email?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
No, it's inside the mobile app.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So you'd have to open up the mobile app, take a look
at the quiz of the week, andthen you can take that quiz.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Okay.
So it's sort of like thosehealth apps where you know you
go in and it's got exercises forthe day or whatever.
Go in and see that.
Yeah, I tried putting it on myphone, but I have an Android.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I'm coming up with Android soon, but not quite yet,
so I'll be sure to let you knowonce it's available for you.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, let me know, um , because I was trying to see,
all right, how does it work?
It looks so cool.
I mean, certainly the pricepoint is great, for sure.
Yeah, you know, I only have afew paying customers right now.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
um, but you know I I'm still brand new.
It just came out a couplemonths ago and it's always a
slow start.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Right, that's okay.
I mean you need to startbuilding that up and the reviews
Look.
It takes a while, but I thinkit's a brilliant idea.
I think it's excellent for,like you said in the on your
website, not just for the olderadults, but also for the family
members who are trying toprotect their older adults.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I mean, the world's getting scary and they're
getting more advanced and it'svery difficult to decipher, like
what's a scam and what's not.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
It does?
What's the it that it's pullingwhere the scams are or what
identifying them?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
yeah, so this is it.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
I can um I was just wondering yeah, it's called ip
quality score.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Ip quality score.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
IP quality score Okay .
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So I just sent that in the chat.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So, yeah, it's a public database, but this you
know in order to actually use it, you would have to go to the
website log in, whereas my appjust has a direct API connection
to it.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah.
Right, excellent and give me anexample of what one of the
quizzes are like.
The educational quizzes, yeah,you know.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Well, let me pull it up and I can show you on that.
Yeah, that was another thing Iwas going to say.
Um, I would love to see a videoof it actually working on the
website.
I don't know if you have anarticle on that.
Did I miss it?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
No, I don't.
I don't think I've done thatquite yet.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, that would be cool to see for us, for us
visual learners.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, let me share my screen here.
Awesome, I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You're very lucky to be living in Boston.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, maybe not in the winter, but otherwise it's a
great city.
And where are you based?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I'm northeast of Atlanta.
Oh, okay 45 minutes northeastof crazy Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I like Atlanta.
I've been there for work a fewtimes.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
for work.
I work in B2B sales tech salesactually so you know I work from
home.
I'm a product expert where Igive demonstrations of the
software to prospective clients.
Cool Well so you must do it,you must work on this in the
side.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah, well, that's how.
That's how the idea of the petrock gets started.
Right, it started on the side.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, so here we have the app itself.
Let me just turn on a littletool I have.
Yeah, okay, great, so you loginto the app.
What I like to have is a weeklyscam alert where every single
week it'll be a new scam alert,so this can keep you informed of
what are some of the mostcommon scams going on.
(10:20):
So this is that one I wastalking about.
God, it takes telling you topay overdue toll charges.
You can drill in here andactually read about this scam
and how it's actually affectinga lot of people.
If you were to Google the scam,you were going to see it
everywhere.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Wow, that's amazing.
I can't believe you got thatscam on your phone.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Oh, I've gotten it like four or five times oh my
God, that is crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
It would be worse if somebody paid it and they didn't
even have one of those passes.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, I was very close to falling for it.
I'm kind of ashamed to say it,but just to say how scary that
is these days.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Well, it's how vulnerable all of us are.
Look these days, you don't know, but it looks awesome.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
It looks very user-friendly it was designed
like that in mind, because ithas to be it has to be right.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Did you use your father as a test subject?
Yeah that's great.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
That's the way to do it yeah that's great so in the
resources we I have threesections.
I'm still creating some videos.
That's going to try to helpstreamline the onboarding
process to make it as easy aspossible for end users to use
the app okay, right but for thequizzes, you know, quiz of the
(11:43):
week.
In fact, esther, we can haveyou take this quiz.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Oh gosh, Okay, I get my glasses.
Oh my God All right.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Do you need that or?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
You receive an email from your bank asking you to
verify your account informationby clicking on a provided link.
What should you do?
Oh, do not click it.
And call the bank or get onyour online platform account for
the bank, but don't ever clickthe link.
Ignore the email.
(12:17):
Your bank will contact you byphone if there's an issue, well,
maybe Forward the email tofriends.
Oh, my God, no.
Submit and verify withSeniorShield.
Well, yes, obviously, if youhave SeniorShield, definitely do
.
Number four you receive anunexpected email from a friend
with an attachment and a vaguemessage.
What should you do?
(12:37):
Open the attachment.
That can be scary.
Contact your friend through adifferent method?
Well, you could do that.
Forward the email to others new.
Click the attachment andforward to friends new.
I hate attachments on emailthat and forwards a pop-up this
(12:58):
is the one my dad would alwaysfall for pop-up message appears
on your computer screen sayingyour system is infected.
Oh, with the virus, oh my god.
It's like the movie thebeekeeper.
Yes, instructs you to call aprovided phone number
immediately.
What is the best course ofaction?
Call the number immediately,unless you want to blow up the
building like a beekeeper.
(13:18):
Close the pop-up window and runa trusted antivirus scan on
your computer.
You could ignore it, it'sprobably just a harmless ad and
provide your credit card.
No, definitely not.
Number four, number two, Idon't know if you can't ignore
it, can you?
an unknown person messages,messages you on social media
(13:40):
this is a very common one yeah,and if you're on social media,
you do get that a lot expressingromantic interest.
Oh, those romance scams yeah,after a brief conversation,
that's scary.
They soon ask for financialhelp.
How should you respond?
Send them money to help out?
No, uh, stop communication andreport the profile.
(14:03):
Yeah, continue chatting.
No, well, unless you want tocatch them, ask them for
personal documents to verifytheir identity, why would you
continue?
No, yeah, number two this.
The sad truth is, I'm sure youknow, many elders get lonely
yeah, I mean, I've been a widowfor 10 years now, so and I'm 67,
(14:26):
you know, I can tell you thatit it does happen, I can see
those romance scams coming tofruition, but they're scary.
Once you know about them, youcan't trust anything.
Yeah, all you have to do iswatch one of those crime things
on TV and yeah, anyway, youreceive a letter stating you've
won the lottery.
You don't remember enteringhalf of that, but you need to
(14:50):
pay a fee to claim the prize.
What's the appropriate action?
Send the fee to claim yourwinnings.
Ignore the letter.
It's likely a scam.
Contact the lottery company toverify your win.
You could do that and share thegood news with friends and
family.
Number three, but you could donumber two as well, right, good.
(15:13):
While browsing online these areall really good good quizzes.
While browsing online, you'reprompted to fill out a survey
for chance to win a high valueprize.
Yeah, but it asks for yoursocial security number and
banking details.
Oh, yeah, what's the safest?
Provide the information nope.
Information, nope.
Only.
Provide partial Nope.
(15:34):
Decline to participate and exitthe site yeah.
Share the info with others?
Oh, that would be worse.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
The spread is high.
This is the initial quiz, and Iwanted to make this one rather
generic and high level thatspans across a number of the
most common scams that peoplesee today.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I can see that.
I mean they're great questions.
Did you come up with these orit's just a series of what your
experience and your dad'sexperience or what you're seeing
online of scams?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I came up with these questions with just knowledge
and research of the most commonscams that are affecting people,
so I figured that would be themost logical place to start.
You're absolutely right we cankind of skip through these last
ones.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, they're really great.
I can see how and then you getthe test results.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, so we have a little touching up to do and
education we should do to makesure we don't fall for any.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
That's great, though, really, I mean, you know the
two things that I think thatthat, well, there's three things
really that I think this app ishitting on is one, just the
awareness, the list of scamsthat are currently happening to
you know, know, getting this,these types of quizzes, which is
(16:57):
a way of showing you how thescam could work, so that you can
educate yourself to not fallfor it.
And then three, just the youknow the, the the alert acts
aspect of having the app on yourphone so that you can put the
possible scam in there to letyou know if it is an app.
(17:18):
Now it's on the person, it's onyour father's phone.
Yeah, you get an alert no, notquite yet okay, but that's what
you want to do.
You want to include the familyas well, or not, is?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
that invasive yeah, uh, so I'll show you something.
Um, so there's another featureof the app where I can actually
send a fake scam text to myfather or my mother yeah, and
then they'll receive a fake scamtext and if they click it
(17:55):
they'll get sent to my websitesaying you fell for a scam.
Oh okay, yeah okay um well, letme show you another way here.
Uh, another piece of the appthat's actually.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
That's actually a great idea to do, not just to
your parents, because if you didthat and then sent them to a
page on your website, you knowthis was a test.
You fell for a scam.
If you want to protect yourself, let me tell you about
SeniorShieldai.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Because I saw somewhere.
I thought I saw somewhere onyour site that there was family
member access, or did I makethat up?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Oh, I did, Okay, great.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, and so we'll connect back here.
That's my dog in the background.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
That's okay, it's my cat on the table.
That's just how it is when youwork at home.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
So yeah, here we have receive a suspicious message.
So I received this one a coupledays ago.
You've probably this is a verycommon one.
Okay, you know from USPS.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I've gotten that myself.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, so this isn't the best UI yet.
I need to make this a littlebit better.
But I just put in the phonenumber I got it from and
uploaded the message itself,press verify and now it's
telling me it's a scam.
Now the phone number wasn'tknown, but it's saying, based on
(19:51):
the contents of the message,it's a scam.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right, because it's not a known number for UPS.
Right, very good, very good.
I love it.
It's simple, it's clean andeasy to use and I like that you
have the um, the share feedback,because whenever you have
something new, I don't care whatit is a website, an article, an
(20:17):
app, anything at all you wantto get feedback from the people
who are using it, because that'show you change it, that's how
you build it and rebuild itExactly.
I mean, you know from fromselling software, from talking
about software.
It's in constant, you knowrebuilding iterating version one
(20:39):
, version 1.2, version 1.8, andso on and so on.
I mean, that's just, that'sjust the nature of it.
It's always been that way andit should be, because it's
changing with um, everything,not only technology, but how
people use it and um, and peoplecome up with all new ways to
use it.
Um, I love it.
(21:00):
So what feedback, if any?
It's so new, you probablyhaven't.
What feedback, if any, it's sonew, you probably haven't.
What feedback, if any, have yougotten from your users?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
You know, some of the feedback is make it a little
bit easier to.
People always wanted to autoreview their messages and then
immediately identify which one'sa scam.
Apple has blocked the abilityto do that actually yeah, okay
you know, like security andprivacy concerns, so I can't do
(21:33):
that with Apple.
I might be able to do that withAndroid, though.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Okay.
So what they're saying is, ifthey get a message, let's say in
their email that Senior Shieldwould automatically flag it.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Oh, so they don't want to take the extra step to
put it into the app?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Well, everybody wants the automatic toilet.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, you know, there's always the automation
that people want.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
But for Apple not quite there.
I don't even know if we everwill get there.
Android it's possible, becausethey have looser uh security uh
regulations on their phones.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, yeah, but it would be difficult because
you're not only targeting emails, you're also targeting text and
you're also targeting browser.
I I mean, that would be a lotyeah.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
When I was first coming, before the idea was even
developed, I posted about it onReddit.
There's this guy named Liamthat had to respond and I
actually spoke with him becausehe's a product software
developer used to work forGoogle and I spoke with him and
he developed something similarlyfor a google chrome plugin that
would crawl across your emailand manage the sites that you're
(22:50):
viewing, to help do a verysimilar process, because his
grandmother was getting scammed.
Oh, you're hitting upon a somefuture functionality of senior
shield to do that, but I don'thave that yet yeah, well, you
will.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I mean, there's over 10 000 people a day turning 65
and that's going to continue, Ithink, until 2030, I think, and
then past that, uh, the next 10years are going to be the next,
uh, demographic, the nextgeneration turning six.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
So you, yeah, there's uh, the market is there, um you
know how many um scamcomplaints there were by seniors
over the age of 60 in uh 2023no, tell me over 100 000 in the
us oh my god, and those are theones that actually complain.
(23:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Never mind the ones that didn't say anything.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
The average scam amount was $34,000.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
What if people don't?
Speaker 1 (23:56):
have any money for aging in place.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Over $3.4 billion in fraudulent scams for seniors in
2023.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Wow, it's an astronomical number.
Wow, that is definitelysomething to be, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
In the average person .
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I had no idea it was that high.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Upwards of 12 scam or fraudulent text messages a day.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Well that I know the number of messages, but I had no
idea and I had no idea that theaverage loss of uh, the scam,
you know the scammed person was34 000.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I have a friend who just got scammed out of 13 000,
um wow when I was opening up thebank account, I was at like my
local chase branch and I wastelling the banker about my
business and he was telling mehe's like every single week I
see a senior getting scammed.
He's like just last week therewas one that fell into like lost
(24:58):
over a hundred thousand dollarsdue to a crypto scam.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Oh, my god, oh my god , it's gonna.
You definitely have potentialto grow with this.
You know, besides the, thegoogle guy that you were talking
about earlier is are there anyother um apps or programs that
you know of that are similar?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I've come across a couple similar ones, but they
don't really have too much of afollowing at all.
I actually noticed that McAfeeAntivirus.
They came out with somethingsimilar to auto detect scams.
I don't know exactly how itworks, but that's targeting more
of the overall market foridentifying scams as opposed to
(25:45):
educating seniors.
I thought about starting it forbeing broader, but I thought
that maybe having a niche that Istuck to to educate may be the
best way to start out.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, it is Build that I mean.
The one thing I've learned ininternet marketing for 25 plus
years is stick with a niche,really build it up, get your
authority in that niche, andthen you can start playing
around by adding other thingsand you can just, yeah, just
create a new company with thesame product, market it
(26:20):
differently.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That's what.
I was.
Right, exactly what do you?
(26:42):
What would you like to see anyadditions?
The app, I mean.
You know I've heard some people.
You know there's a lot of appsout there for the senior market
on a whole, whether it's fromreminders to take your
medication, assistance ingetting to your doctors or
managing all your healthinformation.
Obviously, I'm focused on scams, but, you know, if there's a
(27:05):
need to broaden outside of justscams, make it more all for one
solution, I would never beopposed to that.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Okay, that makes sense.
Instead of having 20 apps doing20 different things, combine it
all.
Yeah, that would make sense andthat certainly would be very
user-friendly.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Well, there's enough services out there that you
could tack on to.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
As you will notice, as your father gets older and
mother.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
I know I've been through that.
I've been through that myself.
Well, I think you know onething.
I do want to say what I ask you, I'm sorry.
Do you feel that there are, orhave you discovered that there
are, any challenges that you'refacing with this app, besides
just the marketing?
Are there any issues that youfound that you're hitting the
(28:00):
wall on?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
So sometimes with the mobile app when you send a fake
scam message, it doesn't alwaysit's not always embedded with
the hyperlink okay, um, alsolike if I were to add my father,
he would receive a text messagesaying like oh, john ream sent
(28:22):
you, uh, signed you up for this.
Click here to download the appand opt in.
That doesn't always have ahyperlink either.
I've noticed through testingwith end users that that link
doesn't always hyperlink, sothat makes it a little difficult
to understand.
So I'm trying to figure out whythat's the case.
But these are all minor things,but they're not perfect for the
(28:46):
end user experience.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
No, no, but it sounds like it's a coding issue.
You know, a technical issue,right?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I'm working with my developer on those things.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, and, like I said, it'll always be growing.
Well, it's a beautiful site.
Yeah, well, they did a good job, thank you.
I mean you're, you know, yougot everything on there that I
can see.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Did you take a look at my Instagram account?
Speaker 1 (29:12):
At your what account?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Instagram.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
No, not yet why.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Oh, I think there's some fun content on my Instagram
.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Oh, okay, I am going to check you out.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I can also share my screen and show you.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
There we go.
Oh, I see the 3.4 billion.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Wow, is that your father?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
No no.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
I see somebody there.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
But yeah, just you know a lot of education about
the marketplace, thoughtleadership, you know just trying
to tell people who SeniorShield is, what we stand for,
how we're trying to help.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
At the end of the day , that's what it's all about,
and you know I have a.
Do you have a YouTube channelas of yet?
Speaker 2 (30:12):
I've created one, but I haven't uploaded any videos
to it yet.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Okay, you'll find.
You know I have two YouTubechannels, one for each of the
websites, and I mean that took awhile to to gain traction, but
once it once it did.
It's so wonderful to get thereplies, um comments from people
(30:35):
saying, oh, this was so veryhelpful, thank you.
This just happened to my mother.
You know this really helped.
I mean you get a lot of, youknow, strange, weird ones too,
but the helpful ones are thegrateful ones.
It really fills your heart andit really makes you feel like,
okay, you know, those 18 hours Ispent in front of the computer
(30:56):
really are worthwhile.
So I think you'll get that too.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
And I just read that Instagram just passed as the
second most used search engineover youtube really yeah, so
keep market, keep marketing oninstagram I'm building up my
base just by building up somefollowers and you know I'm going
to keep posting and you know,hopefully, uh, you know,
(31:24):
hopefully I'll be able to helpsome people not get scammed yeah
, as long as the information isuseful, eventually it'll get to
where it needs to get to well, Imean, you know, I think your
podcast is great.
I was taking a look at it oh,thank you it all comes down to.
Education is just so important,but sometimes it's hard to get
that education to the ears thatneed to hear it.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
It is.
It is.
I mean, sometimes I feel likeI'm pulling a donkey across the
road.
You know you have that infothere.
You want to give it to them,but they just don't seem to.
Well, you know, aging is veryemotional.
It's emotional admitting you'regetting older.
It's emotional you can't do asmuch as you you know you could
(32:07):
um.
And then it's emotional for thefamily members watching their
loved one going through thatprocess it.
You know you're fighting somany issues and in aging in
place issues.
The second factor is is cost.
Usually a lot of homerenovations cost a lot of money.
So that's why I really lovetools, you know, like the Senior
(32:29):
Shield app, where it'sextremely affordable and it's so
user-friendly.
And look if it can save you$34,000, what the hey?
That's a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
It's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
That's a lot of money .
It's a lot of money.
So I think that it's yeah, it'sgreat, it's great.
Oh, I thank you so much, John.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Thank you for your time and it was so great to meet
you and I'm really lookingforward to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Well ditto.
Yeah, I can't wait to showcasethis.
I'm going to start writing thearticle right away and let them
know that the podcast is coming.
And, yeah, maybe I'll put itahead of the schedule.
I know we have a schedule, butmaybe I'll do that because it
was really good, thank you.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to talking toyou again.
(33:18):
I look forward to seeing howthis thing improves.
I can't wait for it to get onAndroid.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, I will let you know once it does.
I was speaking with mydeveloper yesterday, so that's
next up all right, cool.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Well, you have an awesome day, enjoy boston, and I
will talk to you later have agreat day take care, thank you.
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