Hi Jason, great to meet you. Tell us about your business…
It's great to meet you too! We have created a mobile application called 'Genie' - Genie is a digital protector, making sure people are safe from dangerous scams and harassing spam calls. We are working hard every day to make the world a safer place!
That sounds like something many of us would benefit from! Tell us more…
Scammers target older adults disproportionately, as they are wealthier and more likely to fall for scams.
Last year in the US alone $39 billion was lost to phone scams, and over 50% of older adults were targeted, causing not only financial losses but also emotional anxiety.
Those are shocking numbers but not dissimilar in scale to what we found when researching financial fraud and scams here in the UK. How does Genie go about protecting older adults from scams and fraud?
Genie uses artificial intelligence technology to screen unknown and suspicious callers. Genie answers and talks to unknown callers, blocks the bad ones, passes the good ones though, and empowers the user with the right information to decide when Genie passes them through.
Wow, it almost sounds like having a personal assistant! Tell us a little about the background of Genie…
In 2018, I moved back to Israel from California after 24 years to be closer to my ageing parents. They would ask me multiple times a day to review various communications they would get via phone, text, or e-mail, offering them various things or pretending to be a vendor working with them.
I realised that my parents lacked the ability to discern between legitimate communications and those only after their money, and I decided there has to be a better way to protect them. In 2020, during the COVID-19 outbreak, the number of daily calls from my parents jumped, and I decided to take action and explore technological solutions to the other pandemic, that of scam and spam attacks on older adults!
That’s a story I’m sure many of us with older relatives can resonate with. Is Genie on the market and available for use now?
Genie for Android is live and has hundreds of subscribers. Genie for iPhone is in limited release and is accepting BETA users. In both cases a quick online questionnaire lets people check if Genie can work with their phone and mobile carrier, and if so, they get seven days free to try it out.
You can learn more about Genie at https://www.lifesgenie.com/.
Longevitech TLV 2023 takes place across the 13th – 14th of February.
