How it works
Practice, coaching, proof.
A fire drill doesn't lecture you about fire. It builds the reflex. Here's exactly what happens after a family enrolls — step by step, drill by drill.
Enroll with consent.
You sign up and your parent opts in — always. Tell us a bit about them (email, phone, the scams they've seen before). Setup takes ten minutes, and there's nothing for them to install.
We run safe, realistic drills.
On an unpredictable schedule, we send practice versions of the exact scams hitting older adults right now — starting with email, expanding to texts and calls with written consent. Drills are modeled on the latest tactics reported to the FBI and FTC.
Coaching in the moment they slip.
If your dad clicks, nothing bad happens. A friendly page opens instead — a specific, usable lesson in thirty seconds. No lecture, no shame. Research shows this exact moment is when the lesson sticks.
You get the report card.
Every month: which drills we ran, what they caught, what they missed, and their resilience trend over time. Proof they're getting sharper — and an early heads-up if their judgment starts to slip.
What a drill actually looks like
The “account locked” email. Dad gets an email that looks like it's from a bank: “Unusual sign-in detected. Verify your account within 24 hours.” If he pauses, checks the sender, and deletes or reports it — that's a win on his report card. If he clicks, a calm page opens: “This was a Spry practice drill. Real banks never ask you to ‘verify’ through an email link. Here are the three tells you can check in five seconds.” Total time: under a minute.
The practice “grandparent” text. (SMS drills require written consent — see Our promise.) A text arrives: “Grandma, it's me — I'm in trouble, please don't tell Mom. Can you send gift cards?” The moment she replies or clicks, the coaching kicks in: “Scammers pretend to be family in a panic. The counter-move: hang up and call your grandchild's real number. You'll never regret double-checking.”
Every drill is modeled on current tactics reported to the FBI, FTC, and state regulators — updated monthly as scams evolve.
The cadence
Drills arrive on an unpredictable schedule — typically 4–6 per month, mixed among real mail so the practice is honest. Unpredictability is the point: real scams don't make appointments. Frequency adapts to your parent: more reinforcement on scam types they've missed, lighter touch once instincts are strong.
What's in the report card
Delivered monthly to up to four family members your parent approves:
- Every drill we ran, and how it went — caught, ignored, or coached
- A resilience score with a trend line across months
- The scam type we're reinforcing next, and why
- A plain-English briefing on this month's most-reported scam
A gentle early-warning system
Research from the University of Florida found that performance on simulated scam tests tracks with memory and real-world risk. A gradual decline in your parent's report-card trend doesn't diagnose anything — but it's the kind of early signal families say they wish they'd had. We surface it quietly, privately, and only to the family members your parent approved.
Sample report — illustrative
Margaret's Scam-Resilience Report
June
Spotted 4 of 5 practice scams this month
- ✓ Fake bank “account locked” email — reported it
- ✓ Prize-sweepstakes email — deleted
- ✓ Fake delivery text — ignored
- ✓ Utility “past-due” email — reported it
- ! Fake bank text — clicked, then completed a 30-second coaching moment
Where drills stand today
Today: email drills (plus paper-mail drills where available).
With written consent: text-message drills.
Coming: practice phone calls, including AI-voice “grandparent scam” simulations — the scam family members fear most, rehearsed safely.
We sequence channels this way deliberately: text and voice simulations are regulated under federal telemarketing law, and we built our consent process to exceed those requirements rather than skirt them.
Ready to run the first drill?
Join the early-access list — or read the honest answers to the questions every family asks first.