Need to monitor online activity of my elderly parent

APPLE, please come up with a senior mode (similar to kids)!

Apple will not see your concern in this user-to-user forum. Use a feedback link as muguy has suggested to place this before someone who works for Apple.

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MJJOSLYN wrote:

Thank you. I’ve done that. In the meantime, does anyone know of apps that can monitor the elderly online?

Monitoring an adult's online activity without their permission may well be illegal, depending on where you live. Unless your mother has been declared incompetent or has requested your help in this matter, there may not be much you can do other than to educate her. AARP's website has some resources on how to recognize and avoid scams.

If your mother is falling victim to a romance scam, it sounds as if she might be lonely. Maybe you could help her with that?

MJJOSLYN wrote:

Thank you. She lives with family (including great grandchildren) and has many friends. We’re afraid she may have the beginnings of dementia. She is under a doctors care. Some family members do not want to have her declared incompetent; so we have gone the power of attorney route.

Having someone declared incompetent can be very upsetting for all parties. If you have the POA, that might cover you for a lot.

But, it's back to the question of how to monitor online activity. I believe that you can set a screen time password that is different than the iPhone password. So, you should be able to lock down some things without depriving her of the use of the device. But, as for remotely monitoring where she goes once she gets online.... there really isn't any easy way to do that from an iPhone. There are some apps/services that claim to do that but I can't really comment on any of them. You could also check with your cellular carrier to see if they have any access control options.

If you have the financial POA, you may want to approach this from a different angle and restrict her access to money and credit cards. The less money she has access to, the less she can be scammed out of. But that's not perfect, either. She could be talked into opening up new cards.

This is a really tough situation. I was lucky because even as my parents got older and less mentally competent, they only had very limited online access so this was one concern we didn't have.

Wishing you all the best.