Newark Advertiser reader letters: The threat from technology

I wonder how many people in the Advertiser area have received scam calls in one way or another?

Having lived in Lincolnshire for many years, and now in Nottinghamshire, I have received many calls on my landline telephone, and in recent weeks on what I would describe as my “emergency phone” which in the past was only used for outgoing calls while driving.

Readers may recall that in June 2022, the Advertiser published a letter titled “Prisoners of a modern age” from a gentleman who wrote that as an aged pensioner, trapped as I am in the current world of modern technology.

He was concerned at the levels of rubbish coming through his letterbox relating to online technology and which he could not afford, like me and so many others! Three other letters on the same theme appeared in July.

Given the Government's embrace of technology, one would like to think that they could stop all types of scam calls, but at the same time they, like the police and other agencies, seem to be impotent and are unable to stop it even though scam calls, cyber crime etc has been going on for years and largely affecting the elderly (or so it would appear) in our present day society.

A recent Private Eye drew attention to the 12 or so problems that social media caused to both children and teenagers, yet the Online Safety Act would not come into being until 2025!

Ofcom stated that social media companies needed to be both "honest and transparent" in the future. In a later page in the same magazine, Private Eye reported on a change to our telephone network which will affect a million old and vulnerable people, like me, who rely on our landline phone to contact family, friends and doctor's surgeries and other firms who are only available between Monday and Friday, and are being charged more for that privilege as I have recently discovered.

This is a lifeline for all of us in retirement which will presumably be cut off when the changes to the telephone network will be made in 2027.

But does anybody in Government, the political parties or in business really care! Yet again those in retirement and elderly are being discriminated against in old age!

A M WADDINGTON, SUTTON ON TRENT