Hi everyone, this is Esther Kane and I did an
interview just a few days ago with John Ream
from SeniorShield .ai. He's the creator and founder
of an app and the website is SeniorShield .ai
and of course the app is SeniorShield. It's a
wonderful app to try to help seniors, but of
course anyone I think, identify, spam, text,
which we all seem to be getting lately. I've
been getting for a few times a week now, I get
a text from the United States Post Office addressed
to my cat, Stella, who actually passed away last
year. Obviously, I can tell that that's a scam
because why would the post office be texting
me? There's no reason. And two, it's addressed
to my cat. So that's an easy one to identify,
but not all text messages that come in are easy
to identify. So with this great app that he created,
you can put the message into the app and it will
let you know if it's legit or if it's fake. On
top of that, you know, he made the pricing extremely
affordable. There's three models, there's the
free model, there's 99 cents a month model, and
then there's $3 .99 a month model. Those are
all, I think, very affordable, you know, just
to keep yourself safe. to keep your senior loved
ones safe. I mean, we all know that technology
is changing so quick. It's hard to keep up. It's
hard to know what's legit and what's not anymore,
at least for most of us. So stick around, take
a look at the thought at the interview, and I
hope you like it. Of course, you know, click
the like button, give us your comments, subscribe
to our channel. We appreciate each and every
single one of our subscribers. And I will see
you next time and look forward to your comments.
Take care. I'm sure you've been talking a lot
about the app. Yes, definitely. It's new. I just
released it about a month and a half ago. Wow.
How long did it take you or whomever to create
it? Did you create it? I did not write. I came
up with the idea and everything myself, but I
am not a software developer. Okay. But I got
someone to develop it for me. Perfect. It looks
amazing. I built Senior Shield with the family
caregivers in mind because I came up with this
idea because my father, he's starting to age
and his cognitive abilities are declining a little
bit. And he's very susceptible to scams, primarily.
You have a virus on your phone. You need this
virus protection. Oh, no. So I saw my dad would
always fall for it, pay for it. My mom would
be canceling the credit cards. It would keep
happening. And I'm like, he keeps getting scammed
in the text messages. I was like, what if I could
educate him in the text messages? So that's kind
of where my original idea came from. I love it.
I mean, I love that there's that personal history
because you, you understand the need of the family
members trying to protect. And not only that,
but the older adult too. Look, you know, everyone
gets, everyone can easily get scammed these days,
especially with AI. Who knows what to do. Have
you seen the toll scams? No, T O L L the toll.
Like, yeah, like You know, you missed your toll
when you went on the highway. So they're very
common one going on across many different 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 is overdue.
I almost clicked the link. Then I'm like, wait
a second. I uploaded it into senior shield and
it told me it was a scam. And then I Googled
it and I'm like, oh my God. The creator of Senior
Shield almost just fell for a scam. It's so easy.
Yes. It's so easy. You don't know what to believe
anymore, honestly. So how exactly does the app
identify a scam? I mean, you have to put it in
there, right? Yeah. So it's still new. So I don't
think the usability, it's not perfect. Sure.
Nothing. Look, it's always evolving. Yeah. But
so there's a few different things that it does.
One, one can sign up their parents or their family
member, friend, someone that may be susceptible
to scams. And once they sign them up, that person
can then opt in, then they can receive like a
daily text message of, oh, here's a notification
of some common scams that are going on. And here's
how to stay aware of it. Just education in the
text messages. themselves. Another way is inside
the app you can upload the contents of a message
and the phone number or email and what it does
then is it actually pings across a known scam
database and tells you if that phone number or
email are in that database and if it's a known
scammer. Separately it actually reviews the content
of the message and uses AI to analyze that message
and to tell you if it looks like a scam or not.
Right. Or if it's a message that's already been
identified as a scam or even even if it's a paragraph,
I suppose, or a sentence saying, hey, this has
been used. Yes. Well, that's a good way to use
AI. Yeah. Then there's educational quizzes in
it. Yeah. How does that work? Is that like something
that comes on a daily text message or email or?
No, it's inside the mobile app. OK. So you'd
have to open up the mobile app, take a look at
the quiz of the week, and then you can take that
quiz. Okay, so it's sort of like those health
apps where, you know, you go in and it's got
exercises for the day or whatever, and go in
and see that. Yeah, I tried putting it on my
phone, but I have an Android. I'm coming in with
Android soon, but not quite yet, so I'll be sure
to let you know once it's available. Yeah, let
me know. Because I was trying to see, all right,
how does it work? It looks so cool. I mean, certainly
the price point is great. For sure. Yeah, you
know, I only have a few paying customers right
now. But you know, I'm still brand new. It just
came out a couple months ago. And it was a slow
start. Right. That's OK. I mean, you need to
start building that up and the reviews. Look,
it takes a while, but I think it's a brilliant
idea. I think it's excellent for, like you said
on your website, not just for the older adults,
but also for the family members who are trying
to protect their older adults. I mean, the world's
getting scary and they're getting more advanced
and it's very difficult to decipher. Like, what's
the scam and what's not? It does. Where's that?
What's the database that it's pulling where the
scams are or what identifying them? Yeah. So
this is it. I can. I was just wondering. Yeah,
it's called IP quality score. IP quality score.
Okay. So I just sent that in the chat. Okay.
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
app just has a direct API connection to it. Right.
Yeah. Right. Excellent. And. Give me an example
of what one of the quizzes are like, the educational
quizzes. Yeah, you know, let me pull it up and
I can show you. Yeah, that was another thing
I was going to say. I would love to see a video
of it actually working on the website. I don't
know if you have an article on that. Did I miss
it? No, I don't. I don't think I've done that
quite yet. Yeah, that would be cool to see. For
us, uh, for us visual learners. Yeah. Let me
share my screen here. Awesome. I'm going to.
And you're very lucky to be living in Boston.
Well, maybe not in the winter, but otherwise
it's a great city. And where are you based? I'm
Northeast of Atlanta. Okay. 45 minutes Northeast
of crazy Atlanta. I like that way. And I've been
there for work a few times. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What
do you do for work? I work in B2B sales, tech
sales, actually. So, you know, I work from home.
I'm a product expert where I give demonstrations
of the software to prospective clients. Cool.
Well, so you must work on this on the side. Yeah.
Well, that's how that's how the idea of the pet
rock gets started. Right. It started on the side.
Yeah, so here we have the app itself. Let me
just turn on a little tool I have. Yeah, OK,
great. So you log into the app. What I like to
have is a weekly scam alert where every single
week it'll be a new scam alert. So this can keep
you informed of what are some of the most common
scams going on. So this is that one I was talking
about. Got a text telling you to pay overdue
toll charges. You can drill in here and actually
read about this scam and how it's actually affecting
a lot of people. If you were to Google the scam,
you are going to see it everywhere. Wow. That's
amazing. I can't believe you got that scam on
your phone. Oh, I've gotten it like four or five
times. That is crazy. It would be worse if somebody
paid it and they didn't even have one of those
passes. Yeah, I was very close to falling for
it. I'm kind of ashamed to say it, but just to
say how scary it is these days. Well, it's how
vulnerable all of us are. Look, these days you
don't know, but it looks awesome. It looks very
user friendly. It was designed like that in mind
because it has to be. It has to be right. Did
you use your father as a test subject? Yeah.
That's great. That's the way to do it. Yeah.
That's great. So in the resources, I have three
sections. I'm still creating some videos that's
going to try to help streamline the onboarding
process to make it as easy as possible for end
users to use the app. Okay, right. But for the
quizzes, you know, quiz of the week. In fact,
Esther, we can have you take this quiz. Oh, gosh.
Okay. I get my glasses. Oh my god. All right.
You receive an email from your bank asking you
to verify your account information by clicking
on a provided link. What should you do? Oh, do
not click it and call the bank or get on your
online platform account for the bank. But don't
ever click the link. Ignore the email. Your bank
will contact you by phone if there's an issue.
Well, maybe. Forward the email to friends, oh
my god, no. Submit and verify with Senior Shield,
well yes, obviously. If you have Senior Shield,
definitely do number four. You receive an unexpected
email from a friend with an attachment and a
vague message. What should you do? Open the attachment?
That can be scary. Contact your friend through
a different method? Well, you could do that.
Forward the email to others? No. Click the attachment
and forward to friends. No. I hate attachments
on email. That and forwards. A pop -up message.
This is the one my dad would always fall for.
A pop -up message appears on your computer screen
saying your system is infected. Oh, with the
virus. Oh my god, it's like the movie The Beekeeper.
Yes. And instructs you to call a provided phone
number immediately. What is the best course of
action? Call the number immediately. unless you
want to blow up the building like a beekeeper.
Close the pop -up window and run a trusted antivirus
scan on your computer. You could ignore it. It's
probably just a harmless ad. Provide your credit
card. No, definitely not number four. Number
two. I don't know if you can ignore it, can you?
An unknown person messages you on social media.
This is a very common one. Yeah, and if you're
on social media, you do get that a lot. Expressing
romantic interest. Oh, those romance scams after
a brief conversation. That's scary. They soon
ask for financial help. How should you respond?
Send them money to help out? No. Stop communication
and report the profile. Yeah. Continue chatting.
No. Well, unless you want to catch them. Ask
them for personal documents to verify their identity.
Why would you continue? No. Yeah. Number two.
The sad truth is, I'm sure, you know, many elders
get lonely. Yeah. I mean, I've been a widow for
10 years now. So and I'm 67. You know, I can
tell you that It does happen. I can see those
romance scams coming to fruition, but they're
scary. Once you know about them, you can't trust
anything. All you have to do is watch one of
those crime things on TV. Anyway, you receive
a letter stating you've won the lottery. You
don't remember entering. But you need to pay
a fee to claim the prize. What's the appropriate
action? Send the fee to claim your winnings.
Hmm ignore the letter. It's likely a scam Contact
the lottery company to verify your win. You could
do that and share the good news with friends
and family number three But you could do number
two as well, right? Um while browsing online.
Yep. These are all really good Good quizzes.
While browsing online, you're prompted to fill
out a survey for chance to win a high value prize.
Yeah. But it asks for your social security number
and banking details. Oh, yeah. What's the safest?
Provide the information? No. Only provide partial?
No. Decline to participate and exit the site?
Yeah. Share the info with others. Oh, that would
be worse. The spread is high. This is the initial
quiz, and I wanted to make this one rather generic
and high level that spans across a number of
the most common scams that people see today.
I can see that. I mean, they're great questions.
Did you come up with these or it's just a series
of what your experience and your dad's experience
or what you're seeing online of scams? I came
up with these questions with just knowledge and
research of the most common scams that are affecting
people. So I figured that would be the most logical
place to start. You're absolutely right. We can
kind of skip through these last ones. Yeah, they're
really great. I can see how, and then you got
the test results. I love it. Yeah, so we have
a little touching up to do and education we should
do to make sure we don't fall for any. That's
great though, really. I mean, The two things
that I think that, well, there's three things
really that I think this app is hitting on is
one, just the awareness, the list of scams that
are currently happening. Two, getting these types
of quizzes, which is a way of showing you how
the scam could work so that you can educate yourself
to not fall for it. And then three, just the,
the alert aspect of having the app on your phone
so that you can put the possible scam in there
to let you know if it is an app. Now, it's on
your father's phone. Do you get an alert? No,
not quite yet. OK, but that's what you want to
do. You want to include the family as well or
not? Is that invasive? I'll show you something.
So there's another feature of the app where I
can actually send a fake scam text to my father
or my mother. And then they'll receive a fake
scam text and if they click it, they'll get sent
to my website saying you fell for a scam. Oh,
okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, let me show you another
way here. Another piece of the app. That's actually
that's actually a great idea to do, not just
to your parents, because if you did that and
then sent them to a page on your website, you
know, this was a test. You fell for a scam. If
you want to protect yourself, let me tell you.
about seniorshield .ai. Yep. Because I saw somewhere,
I thought I saw somewhere on your site that there
was family member access or did I make that up?
Yes. Oh, I did. Okay, great. Yeah. And so we'll
connect back here. That's my dog in the background.
That's okay. It's my cat on the table. That's
just how it is when you work at home. So yeah,
here we have receive a suspicious message. So
I received this one a couple days ago. You've
probably, this is a very common one. You know,
come from USPS. I've gotten that myself. Yeah.
So this isn't the best UI yet. I need to make
this a little bit better. But I just put in the
phone number 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't known,
but it's saying based on the contents of the
message, it's a scam. Right, because it's not
a known number for UPS. Very good. Very good.
I love it. It's simple. It's clean and easy to
use. And I like that you have the share feedback
because whenever you have something new, I don't
care what it is, a website, an article, an app,
anything at all, you want to get feedback from
the people who are using it. because that's how
you change it, that's how you build it and rebuild
it. Exactly. I mean, you know, from selling software,
from talking about software, it's in constant,
you know, rebuilding mode. All the iterating.
Right? Right? Version 1, version 1 .2, version
1 .8, and so on and so on. I mean, that's just
the nature of it. It's always been that way.
And it should be. because it's changing with
everything, not only technology, but how people
use it. And people come up with all new ways
to use it. I love it. So what feedback, if any,
it's so new, you probably haven't, what feedback,
if any, have you gotten from your users? You
know, some of the feedback is make it a little
bit easier to People always wanted to auto review
their messages and then immediately identify
which one's a scam. Apple has blocked the ability
to do that. Yeah. Okay. You know, like security
and privacy concern. So I can't do that with
Apple. I might be able to do that with Android
though. Okay. So what they're saying is if they
get a message, let's say in their email that
Senior Shield would automatically flag it? Yes.
Oh, so they don't want to take the extra step
to put it into the app. Correct. Well, everybody
wants the automatic toilet. Yeah, you know, there's
always the automation that people want. Yeah.
But for Apple, not quite there. Probably. I don't
even know if we ever will get there. But Android,
it's possible because they have looser. uh security
uh regulations on their phones 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 mean that's that
would be a lot yeah when i i when i was first
come before the idea was even like developed
i posted about it on reddit there's this guy
named liam that had to respond and i actually
spoke with him because he's a product software
developer used to work for Google and I spoke
with him and he developed something similarly
for a Google Chrome plugin that would crawl across
your email and manage the sites that you're viewing
to help do a very similar process because his
grandmother was getting scammed. You're hitting
upon some future functionality of senior shield
to do that, but I don't have that yet. Yeah,
well, you will. I mean, there's over 10 ,000
people a day turning 65. And that's going to
continue, I think, until 2030, I think. And then
past that, the next 10 years are going to be
the next demographic, the next generation turning
60. So yeah, the market is there. Do you know
how many? Scam complaints there were by seniors
over the age of 60 in 2023. No, tell me. Over
100 ,000 in the U .S. Oh my God. And those are
the ones that actually complained. Right. Never
mind the ones that didn't say anything. The average
scam amount was 34 ,000. No. Yeah. Oh my God.
I wonder why people don't have any money for
aging in place. over $3 .4 billion in fraudulent
scams for seniors in 2023. It's an astronomical
number. Wow. That is definitely something to
be, yeah. I had no idea it was that high. Upwards
of 12 scam or fraudulent text messages a day.
Well, that I know. The number of messages. But
I had no idea and I had no idea that the average
loss of the scam, you know, the scammed person
was thirty four thousand. I have a friend who
just got scammed out of thirteen thousand. Wow.
When I was opening up the bank account, I was
at like my local Chase branch and I was telling
the banker about my business and he was telling
me he's like. Every single week I see a senior
getting scammed. He's like just last week. There
was one that fell into like lost over $100 ,000
due to a crypto scam. God. Oh my God, it's gonna.
You definitely have potential to grow with this.
You know, besides the Google guy that you were
talking about earlier, is are there any other
apps or programs that you know of that are similar?
I've come across a couple similar ones, but they
don't really have too much of a following at
all. I actually noticed that McAfee antivirus,
they came out with something similar to auto
-detect scams. I don't know exactly how it works,
but that's targeting more of the overall market
for identifying scams as opposed to educating
seniors. I thought about starting it for being
broader, but I thought that maybe having a niche
that I stuck to, to educate may be the best way
to start out. Yeah, it is. Build that. I mean,
the one thing I've learned in internet marketing
for 25 plus years is stick with a niche, really
build it up, get your authority in that niche,
and then you can start playing around by adding
other things. And you can just, yeah, just. create
a new company with the same product, market it
differently. That's right. Right. Exactly. What
do you what would you like to see any additions
to this app? What would you like it to see it
do that it's currently not doing? Obviously,
it's so new. Yeah, I mean, well, I obviously
want to get more feedback from, you know, end
users. I want to hear more from them of what
they would hope to get out of the app. I mean,
you know, I've heard some people, you know, there's
a lot of apps out there for the senior market
on a whole, whether it's from reminders to take
your medication, assistance in getting to your
doctors or managing all your health information.
Obviously, I'm focused on scams, but, you know,
if there's a need to broaden outside of just
scams, make it more all for one solution. I would
never be opposed to that. OK, that makes sense.
instead of having 20 apps doing 20 different
things combined at all. Yeah, that would make
sense. That certainly would be very user friendly.
Yeah. Well, there's enough services out there
that you could tack onto. Yeah. As you will notice
as your father gets older and mother. Yeah, yeah.
I know. It's I've been through that. I've been
through that myself. Well, I think You know,
one thing I do want to ask you, I'm sorry. Do
you feel that there are or have you discovered
that there are any challenges that you're facing
with this app besides just the marketing? Are
there any issues that you found that you're hitting
the wall on? So sometimes with the mobile app,
when you send a fake scam message, it's not always
embedded with the hyperlink. OK. Also, like if
I were to add my father, he would receive a text
message saying like, oh, John Ream sent you,
signed you up for this. Click here to download
the app and opt in. That doesn't always have
a hyperlink either. I've noticed through testing
with end users that that link doesn't always
hyperlink. So that makes it a little difficult
to understand. So I'm trying to figure out why
that's the case. But these are all... minor things,
but they're not, they're not perfect for the
end user experience. No, no, but it sounds like
it's a coding issue, you know, a technical issue,
right? I'm working with my developer on those
things. 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, you got everything on there that I
can see. Did you take a look at my Instagram
account? At your what account? Instagram. No,
not yet. Why? Oh, I think there's some fun content
on my Instagram. Oh, okay. I am going to check
you out. I can also share my screen and show
you. Here we go. Oh, I see the 3 .4 billion.
Yeah. Wow. Is that your father? No, no. I see
somebody there. But yeah, just, you know, a lot
of education about the marketplace, thought leadership,
you know, just trying to tell people who SeedYourShield
is, what we stand for, how we're trying to help.
At the end of the day, that's what it's all about.
And, you know, I have a, do you have a YouTube
channel as of yet? I've created one, but I haven't
uploaded any videos to it yet. Okay, you'll find,
you know, I have two YouTube channels, one for
each of the websites, and I mean, that took a
while to gain traction, but once it did, it's
so wonderful to get the... replies, comments
from people saying, oh, this was so very helpful.
Thank you. This just happened to my mother. This
really helped. I mean, you get a lot of strange,
weird ones, too. But the helpful ones are the
grateful ones. It really fills your heart. And
it really makes you feel like, OK, those 18 hours
I spent in front of the computer really are worthwhile.
I think you'll get that too. And I just read
that Instagram just passed as the second most
used search engine over YouTube. Really? Yeah.
So keep market, keep marketing on Instagram.
I'm building up my base just by building up some
followers and, you know, I'm going to keep posting
and, you know, hopefully, you know, hopefully
I'll be able to help some people not get scammed.
Yeah, as long as the information is useful, eventually
it'll get to where it needs to get to. Well,
I mean, you know, I think your podcast is great.
I was taking a look at it. Thank you. It all
comes down to education is just so important,
but sometimes it's hard to get that education
to the ears that need to hear it. It is it is
I mean sometimes I feel like I'm pulling a donkey
across the road, you know You have that info
there you want to give it to them, but they just
don't seem to well It you know aging is very
emotional It's emotional admitting you're getting
older. It's emotional. You can't do as much as
you you know, you could And then it's emotional
for the family members watching their loved one
going through that process it You know, you're
fighting so many issues. And in aging in place
issues, the second factor is cost. Usually a
lot of home renovations cost a lot of money.
So that's why I really love tools, you know,
like the Senior Shield app, where it's extremely
affordable, and it's so user friendly. And look,
if it can save you $34 ,000, what the hay. That's
a lot of money. It's a lot of money. So I think
that it's yeah, it's great. It's great. Oh, I
thank you so much, John. Thank you for your time.
And so great to meet you. And I'm really looking
forward to the podcast. Well, ditto. Yeah, I
can't wait to showcase this. I'm going to start
writing the article right away and let them know
that the podcast is coming. And yeah, maybe I'll
put it ahead of the schedule. I know we have
a schedule, but maybe I'll do that because it
was really good. Thank you. Thank you so much.
I look forward to talking to you again. I look
forward to seeing how this thing improves. I
can't wait for it to get on Android. Yeah, I
will let you know once it does. I was speaking
with my developer yesterday, so that's next up.
All right, cool. Well, you have an awesome day.
Enjoy Boston. and I will talk to you later. Have
a great day. Take care. You too, hon. Thank you.