Scammed pensioner told heavy rain caused computer virus infection

Is this for real?

An Australian newspaper reports that a 93-year-old woman has been scammed by criminals who rang her up, pretending to be Microsoft, and told her that she had a virus infection on her computer.

These scams, of course, are nothing new and we’ve warned users about them before.

The reason why this one caught my eye is the tall story that the criminals used to fleece Ailsa Hamblin, of Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne.

According to the media reports:

Mrs Hamblin was told recent heavy rain and storms had caused more computer viruses to circulate.

Yes, you read that right.

They said that bad weather could help computer viruses to spread. (Is this some kind of cloud-based security issue? Maybe they meant the Storm virus?)

And what’s more (and…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.