Impact of Consumer Protection Act 2019 in protecting elderly against financial scams

Author – Aman Mujeeb, Student at Alliance University

Best Citation – Aman Mujeeb, Impact of Consumer Protection Act 2019 in protecting elderly against financial scams, ILE Consumer Protection Law and Review, 1 (1) of 2023, Pg. 01-06, ISBN – 978-81-961120-4-2.

ABSTRACT

Finding ideal consumers, also known as target audiences, is one of the most important factors that determine the growth of a producer or agency. A firm targets consumers and produces and markets goods and services accordingly. In unethical trade practices, older people are often the target audience of scammers and fraudsters since they are slower to adapt to technology and they are easier to manipulate. Businesses and agencies take advantage of the elderly due to their emotional and technological fragility and vulnerability. The elderly constitute a significant number of victims of unethical trade practices online. Fraudsters target older consumers for certain reasons, like their weak mental state, weak decision-making capacity, and most of them being technologically backward and unaware of the scams and frauds around them. The scammers talk to them with a kind, comforting attitude and warn them and pressurize them into doing what they want them to do by establishing a sense of fear by saying the victim might face unwelcome consequences or losses if they do not act as instructed by the scammer and most of the time this strategy works and the victims are the mere puppets of these anonymous online voices. These fraudsters present themselves as saviours and loot the victim, in some cases looting off their entire life savings these acts also fall under elder abuse since in these practices the elderly are financially and mentally exploited and financial and mental abuse against the category of elder abuse. The consumer Protection Act in India protects elderly consumers against scams and fraudulent activities. The Consumer Protection Act (2019) Act defines a consumer as any person who buys goods or avails services for consideration, and this includes the elderly population. The core objective of this paper is to inform the readers about the scams that target elderly consumers and about provisions under the Consumer Protection Act (2019) that deal with scams and fraudulent activities.

Key words: Consumer Protection Act, fraud, elderly, scams, target audience, financial abuse