Stronger Together.
As the phrase goes in cybersecurity, "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link," and often that weakest link is people.
When we think of cyber attacks, we typically picture faceless hooded hackers breaking into complicated networks. However, the most vulnerable members of our society, the elderly, are frequently on the front lines of these attacks. The hazards are rising, with ransomware assaults targeting senior care facilities and AI-powered voice frauds preying on trust.
For example, Hillcrest Convalescent Center, which provides senior care in Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina. Hackers entered its computers and utilized ransomware to compromise sensitive databases, revealing the personal information of 106,200 people. That data included Social Security numbers, medical information, and bank records, all of which could be sold on the black market or used to commit identity fraud. Elderly people are obvious targets here because compromised information opens the door to fraud or exploitation.
However, these attacks do not usually originate in databases. They are increasingly addressing individuals directly. One particularly tragic example is the growth of AI voice-cloning schemes. In Texas, an 82-year-old man named Jerry received a call from someone claiming to be law enforcement. He thought he heard the terrified, begging voice of his son-in-law in the background. Convinced by the call, he withdrew $9,500, followed by $7,500, for a total loss of $17,000, forcing him out of retirement. What about the foul surprise? That voice was not real. With the help of an app, criminals were able to replicate it with just a few minutes of audio and no prior knowledge of computer science. This reminds me of the times when I would receive random calls from unknown numbers, only to have them immediately hang up. Perhaps they were looking to record my voice?
"I want people to be aware of who they're talking to. My family and I now, we have a certain password," Jerry said.
These two cases, ransomware at a nursing home and AI-driven impersonation scams, demonstrate the range of cyber threats that the elderly face. On the one hand, large-scale breaches jeopardize thousands of identities at once; on the other, hyper-personalized AI frauds exploit trust in real time. Both cause harm that is malicious and caused by humans.
The message is simple: we must defend both systems and people. This includes stronger technical safeguards in institutions, as well as community education, family protocols such as secret passwords, and a shift in consciousness that tells us not to trust every voice on the line. Because in the age of artificial intelligence, even our hearing can be misled.
Sources:Yuxiang Zhai, Xiao Xue, Zekai Guo, Tongtong Jin, Yuting Diao, and Jihong Jeung. 2025. Hear Us, then Protect Us: Navigating Deepfake Scams and Safeguard Interventions with Older Adults through Participatory Design. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 521, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714423 Grabovski, F., Gressel, G., & Mirsky, Y. (2025). ASRJam: Human-Friendly AI Speech Jamming to Prevent Automated Phone Scams. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.11125. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.11125 Simon, E. (2023, November 4). 82-year-old thought son-in-law was in trouble before losing $17K to scammers using AI, family says. ABC13 Houston. https://abc13.com/post/ai-generated-voice-cloning-scams-against-elderly-82-year-old-loses-17000/14009790/ Bifocal Vol 46 Issue 5. (2025). In American Bar Association. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/law_aging/vol46issue5.pdf Rash of hacks hits nursing homes and rehab centers. (2025). https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/rash-hacks-hits-nursing-homes-rehab-centers-a-27773
