When help with your devices becomes control

Much of the help older people get with phones, banking, and accounts is genuine and welcome. A family member sets up a new phone, remembers the passwords, keeps an eye on the money. Most of the time that is care, freely given.

Occasionally the access that came with the help stops being help. It turns into knowing where you are, reading what you send, deciding what you can and cannot do with your own accounts, or moving money you did not agree to move. If that has happened, whether you have noticed it yourself or someone is helping you see it, it can be understood and, where you choose, undone. The starting point is that someone else has more reach into your digital life than you are comfortable with.

What it can look like

None of these on its own proves anything, but together they are worth noticing:

  • Someone knows things you did not tell them: where you have been, who you spoke to, what you bought.

  • Passwords or settings change without you, or you find yourself locked out of an account you have always used.

  • Money moves that you did not arrange, or a card or subscription you do not recognise appears.

  • A device or an app was installed to be “helpful” and now reports your location or activity to someone else.

  • You are discouraged, firmly, from changing a password or asking how an account is set up.

The access that built up over time

The reach usually is not hacking. It is ordinary access that accumulated: a shared login, a phone someone else set up and still knows the PIN for, accounts linked to theirs, a location-sharing feature switched on, a device profile that lets them manage the phone from afar.

The first useful step is simply to see what exists. The audit shared accounts playbook works through the categories one at a time, family sharing, location sharing, linked accounts, streaming and cloud storage, so you can see the current picture before changing anything. Seeing it is not the same as removing it; you can decide what to close, and when.

The money side

Financial control is often the heart of it, and it has its own tools. Joint accounts, a card in your name that someone else uses, subscriptions billed to you, and, in more serious cases, misuse of a power of attorney, a legal arrangement that is meant to help someone act for you, not to act against you.

Banks have staff trained for exactly this. Most have a vulnerable-customer or safeguarding team, and contacting them from a phone the other person does not control is a sound first move. The payment playbook covers separating card and payment access. If a power of attorney is being misused, the body that registers it (in England and Wales, the Office of the Public Guardian) can investigate.

Taking back access, at your pace

If you decide to unwind access, a little care in the order pays off, because some changes are visible to the other person and a few may provoke a reaction. Two things help. Do it from a device and a network the other person does not control, and secure your email first, because email is the way back into most other accounts. The account compromise runbook and the authenticators runbook cover locking an account back down and adding a second factor that is not a text message.

There is no need to do it all at once. If the person concerned also controls your care, your housing, or your day-to-day support, the timing is not only a technical question, and it is worth talking it through with someone before acting.

You do not have to work it out alone

In the UK, Hourglass is the charity dedicated to the abuse of older people, with a free, confidential 24-hour helpline on 0808 808 8141. A bank’s safeguarding team, adult social services, and, where there is theft or threat, the police can each help with part of the picture. Removing your details from the data brokers that make older people easy to target for scams is covered in the data broker playbook.

Last reviewed: 2026-07-08.