- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
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 seemingly without any pun intended), the report continues:
"It's high-pressure salesmanship," Mrs Hamblin said.
Source
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 seemingly without any pun intended), the report continues:
"It's high-pressure salesmanship," Mrs Hamblin said.
Source