Google launches “Online Safety Guide for Seniors”

Hyderabad, October 10, 2018: One day Unmukt Knowledge Series program, in Partnership with Google held here in the city on Tuesday. Senior Citizens are known as Productive Individuals. Seniors are also known as abused individuals said Dr.K.R.Gangadharan, the founder of Heritage Foundation while addressing the gathering at the first Unmukt Knowledge Series held at Google. He has created India’s first Geriatric medical facility – Heritage Medical Centre at Hyderabad in 1994. Talking to 70 plus Senior Citizens he gave a story of a man, Naidu at 90 years, who lived his life to the fullest and how senior citizens can do wonders at any age, he told them, Indians get old when they become 60, but other countries talk about it only when they reach 80years said Dr. K. R. Gangadharan, Chairman, Heritage Foundation quoting findings of a study conducted by London School of Economics. He spoke about Unmukt Festival, India’s biggest festival for Senior Citizens, to make them independent, technology friendly is planned in Hyderabad at Hitex. He also informed among other things, that the festival features a Fashion Show by Elders and gathering of Golden Couples, who have been married for 50 years to share what made them live 50 long years of marriage. Sujata Mukherjee, Google Trust & Safety Research and Outreach Lead in her welcome note emphasized on the importance of Online Safety and released the Online Safety Guide for Senior Citizens in English and Hindi. The guide, which explains few terms and terminology in simple language so that seniors can understand them easily, will soon be made available in other languages including Telugu. You are the one of the few in India to get this Online Safety Guide for Seniors, she told her audience. Speaking at the programme, Monimita Sarkar, MD KW Conferences, said that the objective of the Unmukt Knowledge Series program is to engage Senior Citizens in meaningful dialogue in the run-up to the flagship event to be held at Hitex in December this year in the city Google made a brief presentation on “Online Safety for Senior Citizens” covering four areas: Protecting Online Accounts, Exercising Care when sharing something online; how to identify and avoid scams and how to keep Online conversations Positive and Respectful. Some tips shared were: • Keep your passwords strong, and long minimum 8-9 mixed characters must be used in the combination of lower and upper letters, numbers and symbols, Senior Citizens were told. • Examples were given how to create a strong password. Think of an easy-to-remember sentence. For example, you have two cats at home named Tom and Jerry. Now take the first letter of each word using lowercase and uppercase letters and make “IhtcahnTaJ”. You can even replace letters with numbers or symbols and create a password “Ih2c@hnT&J”. • Use Password Manager to remember many passwords. • Informing seniors to exercise care, they were told to know what they were sharing before they hit send, who are sharing it with and, most importantly, why you are sharing it— do they need to know? • Online scammers use different techniques to trick people into revealing personal and financial details. Some tips were offered to avoid online scams. • Finally, it was recommended to keep online conversations positive and respectful. When you are subjected to Cyberbullying, Mute, Block or Report. Doctors from Apollo Hospitals, Knowledge Partner to Unmukt Festivals, Dr. Vasanth Kumar and Dr. Sandeep Nayani spoke about Physical and Mental Health. • As we age, brains shrink informed Dr.Nayani. The brain shrinks 5 percent per decade after age 40 years. • He dispelled the myth that high BP is normal with aging. People who walk for at least two miles per day, according to some studies are less likely to develop dementia. • Keeping mentally active and intelligently by solving d crosswords, Sudoku, Reading books, music etc help prevent memory loss and dementia he told. The final session of the day was Financial Health, by Guardian Capital Investment Advisors. The talk included an interactive game on the lifecycle of saving and investment as well as tips on how to analyze the market using easily available tools. Karthik who spoke about financial planning said, 35 years of income generated has to provide for the 30 years of retirement.