The new challenge for family and caregivers is computer use by seniors living independently. Some families are thinking about pulling the plug, on the computer as growing senior population ages. The computer has become an important part of their daily lives for many seniors. It allows them to communicate frequently with children and grandchildren, see the latest family photos, and keep them connected to distant family members and friends.

Seniors are easy targets for scammers and purveyors of worthless products and services, because today they are comfortable using email and browsing the web. Those with dementia, Alzheimer's and other age related cognitive disorders are even more easily duped by many of these well crafted scams.

CYBERsitter, CYBERsitter.com, has been well known for almost 14 years as a leading Internet filter product designed to protect kids from adult oriented and other objectionable content. What is not well known is that CYBERsitter is also becoming a tool for helping to protect seniors from being duped into making decisions that could have serious financial consequences. While limiting access to things that may cause them financial harm, CYBERsitter provides a couple of very useful features that help concerned family members and caregivers provide non-intrusive protection that will allow seniors to have full use of their computers.

Some seniors with more advanced cognitive impairments may no longer be able to competently handle their finances. Because they do not want to deny use of the computer, this is a difficult issue for caregivers, but at the same time they want to be able to block access to sites where any type of financial transaction could take place. These might include stock brokerages, banks, online shopping, etc. To block all secure sites where any type of financial transaction can be performed CYBERsitter provides a one click option.

CYBERsitter also provides a special blocking category, unique in the industry, which blocks access to web sites that are advertised by spam. Many users, especially less savvy seniors, cannot easily differentiate spam advertised web sites from legitimate ones. These might include fake pharmacies, debt relief, lotteries, contests, useless health aids, fake charities, etc. Seniors also frequently fall victim to schemes involving automatic monthly shipments of useless vitamins or other health products and it sometimes takes months until anyone notices that $40 or $50 a month is being debited from their checking or savings accounts.

The company has seen a significant number of new customers that are purchasing CYBERsitter to protect their elderly relatives according to Brian Milburn, President and founder of Solid Oak Software. Brian said: "This is a little surprising to me. For 14 years we have focused on protecting kids. We never really considered that this might be useful for seniors."