My Mom (70), God bless her, is tech illiterate, gullible, and the perfect scam target. She recently got really spooked by a targeted scam attempt where someone was claiming to have access to her phone, contacts, etc. It left her feeling too scared to use her phone to keep in touch with her kids and grandkids, which is sad.

Here's my question for yall. What is the simplest phone I could get her that I could load a few apps she'd use on it to allow her to stay in touch with us? What are some added layers of security I could set up to help her be confident that she's not being "hacked" constantly. I want to get her a new, simplified, basic setup that will be less likely to confuse her.

Would Jitterbug work? They have a flip phone and a "smart phone" that is designed to be elder friendly

https://www.lively.com/phones/

Sounds similar to my mom. The problem is, you cannot get away from is the traditional phone call.

My mom called me last year saying she had a fine for failing to pay property taxes. She wanted me to help her pay the fines online. I pay her property taxes and have the receipt. This was a scam and she would have fell for it if her hearing was better. The caller had poor English. Combined with old lady hearing, it was a mess, so she called me.

A flip phone won't stop robo calls. --- I ended up putting my mom on our Google Fi plan. It does a great job (not 100%) of flagging spam calls. I also have it setup that the Google Assistant (their version of Siri) screen all calls not in the contacts or using a verified business number liker her doctor's office.

I have been with Project Fi, now Google Fi for years. I do not know what other carriers do. I would imagine they have to have something similar. I would look around as to which carrier offers the best spam call and call screening services.

I believe we had to enable call screening it may already be a thing you just need to enable it in settings.

I've dealt with these issues with my grandparents and wanted to share my experience:

Computer safety was the biggest threat because the scam callers would try to get them to do things on the internet. Therefore we got this: https://www.telikin.com/. it's essentially just a PC running a custom Linux OS that is locked. The UI never changes like can happen with Windows and it does not allow any 3rd party software to be installed. It's limited, but provides the basics that seniors would utilize (email, safe internet browser, photos, Skype, word processor, a few games, etc.) It may be good to keep an old laptop at their house for you or other family to use if needed.

For phone, I also highly recommend Google Fi service and their call screening ability. It works well.
There are other phones for land line connection that can screen calls, but they are a paid service.
A simple non-smart phone may also help your mom be more confident when using it.

Lastly, we set up an Echo Show screen that we can video call from our phones. You can also call from other Echo devices if you want to get one too or allow calls out. You can disable most all the smart features so it acts like a digital photo frame and can receive calls from pre-defined contacts entered. Each contact invoked only needs an Amazon account and Echo app. Answering calls on the Show is very simple.

Let me know if you have any questions about this.