No, they aren’t scams, at all. It’s one of the more annoying things about Hotmail. Yahoo does it less, and Gmail hasn’t done it in a long time–if they want to tell you something, it will be right on the mail screen.
Go ahead and bank online, at the smallest bank possible. The First National Bank of Townsville is much less likely to be the target of phishers.
Pretty good sum up. Add passwords and personal infos to the list, though.
However, just for the sake of it :
If you’re a French customer of a French bank, a mail in English is very unlikely to be legit.
I think most of the the above would be totally confusing for an elderly (or other person) trying to get used to the internet- much as Chappachula has said.
I am basing this on assisting my near 90 year old mother and my equally elderly aunts with Internet.
They will use Internet Explorer and Outlook as it is cheap and relatively easy. Don’t try and confuse them with different browsers, scripts etc.
Purchase a good anti virus program for them and pay to make sure it is updated- this is the least you can do for them.
Warn them about junk emails and tell them not to pass on any information you wouldn’t pass on to a stranger. Most elderly people (apart from those who have dementia) are no sillier in this regard than a lot of not so elderly people.
Now, this may be different to your friend, but online banking was not an issue. perhaps it is because these folk were a little older but they didn’t bank online- they didn’t even have plastic cards. They had bank books and cheque books and paid bills etc at the post office.
It varies, but I think enough to keep them out of trouble is not a great deal at all.
An idea that might be bad for non-technical reasons…
Could you send them a spoof email that tells them to email you back, as a practical demonstration of why they need to be careful? It might get the point across more effectively if they know why you’re giving them all these rules.