It began when one of the care home residents I look after asked me to take her picture for her Facebook account. Harmless enough – until I noticed the photo had been requested by Michael Bublé. The messages were affectionate and convincing and before long she was being asked for personal information.

I had to find a way to gently break it to her that this was very unlikely to be Mr Bublé, which led to tears, disbelief and embarrassment. In the end, I blocked the scammer on her account – along with several other suspicious profiles. The Mental Capacity Act’s third principle states that everyone has the right to make a bad decision. However, it’s best to stop such things before we start discussing the law.

This story isn’t unusual. Fraudsters know that older people are often more trusting, more likely to be lonely and less likely to spot the warning signs of online scams. According to the charity Independent Age, nearly three in five people aged 65 or older say they’ve been targeted by a scam, and among those who were scammed the average loss was nearly £4,000. Collectively, older people in the UK have been defrauded of an estimated £7.4 billion. About one-third say their mental health suffered as a result.

Now, a new wave of residents is arriving in care homes with iPads, smartphones, and laptops. And with them come new dilemmas. How do you manage passwords for someone with........

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