This Etude is focussed on core digital skills needed to go online.
These ‘extra credits’ are notes are designed for advisers and volunteers to use to help increase their own confidence, skills and knowledge of these topics.
They are designed as supplemental reading to give a broader context and knowledge of the areas covered in this Etude; they are organised in the same order and style as the Etude topics themselves.
All advisers should have experience of having their own email account, even if it is just one they use whilst working in their local office.
Key points –
• Features like Google Drive and OneDrive are basically just fancy terms for cloud storage.
• The resource lists the three most common email providers: if an adviser is more comfortable using some other email provider entirely, they are free to do this. The only thing we stress is that it needs to be free, reliable and secure.
• These email providers all have their own smartphone apps which make them extremely easy to use: any alternatives that are offered to a client should also have this feature.
This exercise is a great one for measuring a client’s engagement. Once they have set up an account, an adviser can send them a message to see if they have understood how to read and respond to an e-mail.
This activity is actually aimed at teaching clients the pitfalls of memberships and generally signing up to websites. Some things they need to be aware of are:
• Some apps only allow themselves to be downloaded if the client agrees to giving away their location (GPS) data
• There is often the box on any membership that a client will have to either tick or untick to agree to accept marketing messages to their email address.
There are also pitfalls associated with any increased online activity that the adviser needs to be aware of.
• Amazon is a great site, but sends a lot of marketing material. Also, their ‘one-click’ feature and constant illusion of sale prices can tempt clients into spending much more than they can afford on things they don’t strictly need.
• Going onto Facebook (or indeed any social media site) can bring a lot of unwelcome attention. Some people can find it very stressful. Others may end up in contact with people from their own past they would much rather avoid, whilst others may feel obliged to continue using the site to a point which is no longer a healthy use of their time.
• Sites such as Youtube (or even common news sites) pose similar risks to social media. As clients can post comments and opinions on articles or videos that they like, they will be susceptible to ‘trolling’, which is not something that they may be familiar with.
These are risk-free and useful cards for clients to have. Advisers will need to have at least a basic feel for what ‘extra’ features different loyalty cards offer. For example:
• Tesco offers points if you link your card to your E-on energy bill • Sainsbury’s Nectar points can be spent at Argos or on Easyjet flights • Boots Advantage card offers discounts at their in-store opticians
Sticky consumers
A major point that advisers will need to be aware of is the nature of ‘sticky consumerism’; this is the principle that loyalty cards work on.
What this means is that when a client has a loyalty card, they can start to feel that they should shop at a particular store just to get points, rather than shop around to get a better deal elsewhere.
For example, a client may shop at Tesco’s normally for some products and Lidl for others. However, once they have a loyalty card at Tesco – because they now see that they get points for their shopping – consumers tend to start buying more things at Tesco, even though they’re slightly more expensive than they were at Lidl.
The thing is, the points they get for doing more shopping at a place very rarely outweigh the increased cost of their shopping: clients really need to be aware that they should not change their shopping habits just because they have a loyalty card!
Boots Loyalty Card
This activity exists purely as a way for clients to improve their confidence when it comes to interacting with technology.
This is a very practical activity: clients would have to do this outside a session with the adviser or volunteer, but should be encouraged to do this and then come back to talk about the experience.
Some local offices may be near enough to a Boots for an adviser to potentially accompany the client on this excursion. This would depend on the local office’s ‘Safety at Work’ policy.
Advisers should be made aware that there is a good resource on debit cards in the Financial Capability resources section of the Citizens advice website. ‘What is a debit card?’ can be found at:
>Intermediate Banking Activity 3 – What is a debit card?
This can be used to discuss debit card features with a client.
Also…
The most common kind of secondary security used on credit cards is something called Mastercard SecureCode: all of these types of secondary security layers will need the client to have another password to remember.
Paypal
• Paypal is a service, but isn’t a bank of any kind. • Setting up a Paypal account is free, but you need an email address and a bank
account to do it. • It works with a debit or credit card. • Once you’ve set it up, you access it by logging in with your own password • It’s used on lots of different websites and services. • It works by taking the money from your account and passing it to the person
you are paying. It’s an intermediary, so that neither you or the other person ever have direct contact or have to swap any kind of personal or banking details.
The most important thing about this activity is to use it to get clients used to navigating webpages.
Advisers should make sure the clients:
• Navigate back and forth through the pages, so guide them to updating some data fields
• Use the dropdown options confidently and accurately • If they are using a tablet, this can help them with touchscreen confidence • If they are using a mouse, this can help them grow confident with moving a
The most important thing about this activity is to use it to get clients used to navigating webpages.
Advisers should make sure the clients:
• Navigate back and forth through the pages, so guide them to updating some data fields
• Use the dropdown options confidently and accurately • If they are using a tablet, this can help them with touchscreen confidence • If they are using a mouse, this can help them grow confident with moving a
cursor
The test on the right is like a simple version of the Money Health Check.
The test on the left is a good one to use just for surfing about and clicking links.
These are pretty standard consumer scams, and there is a lot on these on the existing consumer pages on the Citizens Advice website.
Home >More from us >How we provide advice >Our prevention work >Our education resources >Browse education resources >Consumer education >Scams
Trainers should encourage attendees to bookmark the above. Advisers and volunteers should refer to these pages when discussing these scams in more details with clients.
The game referred to on the resource is also a useful tool that should be used if possible.
Scam types are as follows:
• Work-at-Home Scams – Clients are offered jobs they can do at home such as envelope-stuffing, but have to pay an up-front fee themselves.
• Weight Loss Claims – Ads selling fake or dangerous slimming pills, etc. • Lotteries and Sweepstakes Scams – False claims that the client has won a
lottery, but has to pay a fee to access their winnings. • Fake Cheque Scams – Clients are asked to cash a cheque and then send the
money to someone, keeping part of it. The cheque eventually bounces, leaving the consumer in debt.
• Mystery Shopper Scams – Clients are asked to be mystery shoppers, but have to pay a fee to enrol.
• Miracle Cures – any misleading ads for miracle cures that will not work but cost money.
• Debt Relief Scams – Any misleading ads for help with debts that will either need a payment from the client, or access to their account.
• Online Dating Scams – Some sites will falsely guarantee available dates in a clients area, but they have to pay an enrolment fee.
• Money Transfer Scams – Much like the cheque scam, the client will transfer money and keep some as a fee, but in the end will end up in debt.
• Tech Support Scams – A client may receive a phone call claiming to be tech support for their computer, and will need to pay to fix an alleged problem.
Clients will need guidance on keeping paperwork and staying organised. Advisers and volunteers should use literally any tips or hints that they think will be of use: ultimately the goal here is to ensure that clients have their paperwork in an organised system in case they need assistance in the future.
It is critical that clients have at least some understanding of this if they have their own windows device. If you consider the ‘tech support scam’ mentioned previously, many clients are unaware that the upgrade to Windows 10 is free and is in fact legitimate. This makes them vulnerable to potentially being scammed.
This activity serves as an extension of the ‘Paperwork’ activity. Clients should be able to understand what paperwork is important and what can be discarded. They should also be able to grasp the difference between types of paperwork, and what each type can be used for.
Depending on the clients level of ability, an adviser may want to consider discussing digital storage with them. This can be done in several ways:
o Choosing to receive bills by e-mail o Choosing to receive bank statements electronically o Banking online o Scanning and saving important paperwork in the cloud via an email account.
This activity involves using a clients smartphone, and is a good one to use to protect them from the various ads and pop-ups that will otherwise clog up their phone and diminish their online experience.
As usual, the recommended apps are only recommendations: advisers can recommend other ones, but should feed this back to the Financial Skills for Life team for inclusion in the next version of our toolkit.
Advisers will need to be sure that – when discussing this with clients – that they may need to tackle some preconceptions about what devices can access what content.
There will be clients who do not understand that their children will be able to access inappropriate online material using a smartphone, but they will need to be informed that smartphones often have fully unrestricted online access.
A more common problem is one where clients do not realise that modern games consoles can also go online. This is not limited to those consoles perceived as more ‘adult’ such as Playstations and Xboxes. Even those games consoles perceived as being more kid-focussed such as the Nintendo Wii and various handheld consoles can also go online to access inappropriate materials. This is where parents really need to understand how to apply parental controls to these devices.
The recommendation to use a tablet designed specifically for children is one we stick with, but advisers should be aware that the various kid-friendly filters and options can still be deactivated by an adult or a digitally-literate child. There is no way around this; no device is hard-wired to block inappropriate content.
Parent Pay is a huge system in the UK, and is constantly growing its pool of partner schools. Whether or not it is currently adopted in a local office’s area, the advisors still need to be aware that it exists as it will – almost inevitably – start being adopted by schools in their area at some point.
The action of writing CV’s in and of itself is not one that falls within helping a client with their digital skills or confidence. However, advisers and volunteers are strongly recommended to use the recommended CV-Builder provided by Barclays.
This is a great tool, but does take some time to complete; clients should be prepared to spend the best part of an hour on the site before they even have a basic CV. However, this CV will look professional and polished, and be saved for further editing.
We’re now getting to the really quite advanced topics.
Although an adviser can help a client with this process, any help given at this stage really does need to be quite hands-off. If a client isn’t confident doing most of this activity themselves, the adviser or volunteer should use this as an opportunity to work with the client and diagnose what earlier topics they may need to cover again before they can try online job applications again.
LinkedIn is not really a social network like Facebook, although many people make the mistake of treating it as such. To be honest, it’s not much more than an online noticeboard where you pin up your CV. Clients may find it hard to see the need for it, but the following points are worth keeping in mind.
• Many employers will do an online search of potential employees before hiring them.
• A Facebook account is nothing special, but employers will check it to see if the client has posted inappropriate content. There are several cases of people posting inappropriate pictures etc and so putting off potential employers.
• Having a LinkedIn account – even a pretty basic one – shows that a client has decent digital skills
• It also shows that they are taking job-hunting very seriously. • A lack of a LinkedIn profile can be taken as an indication that a client does not
have a decent level of digital skills. • A LinkedIn network can and often is used as a way of finding new jobs, either by
recommendations within the network or from recruitment agencies.
