Ransomeware!

 

Viruses, identity theft, hackers, organized cyber-crime, take it seriously folks. For every hour you spend on a Social Media site, spend two minutes educating yourself about how to be safe in what can be referred to the “The New World DisOrder” we live in.

If you are lucky you are hearing this term for the first time. Chances are you have heard it before and you may have even suffered the consequences. If so, you are not alone.

 

What is it?

If you have not encountered this could-be nightmare, chances are you or a friend or your business will have to deal with it some day and when you do, you will want to keep this post for reference because without the proper preparation, all those files that you have saved and assume are going to be there forever because you have dual hard drives and an external drive and blah blah blah in your computer could be rendered useless in a matter of seconds.

 

Essentially Ransomware is a broad term used to define about 30,000 known Trojans whose purpose is to get in your computer, execute the unwelcome code and “encrypt” or rearrange the bits and bytes of your files in a way that can only be fixed by the author. The most accurate term I have come across to define this group of Trojans is "cryptoviral extortion" Break it down and it is pretty self-exploratory, if you are still confused I will simplify this a bit further.

 

You accidentally acquire a destructive file on your computer, it is set to execute itself in an hour or a day and once it starts, you can either pay some criminal organization to unlock the files, or you can kiss the last ten years of every memory, tax return, receipt, video and favorite link goodbye. These infections are worms as well, which means the other computers in your home or office are going to be infected faster than you can hit the on/off switch in many cases.

 

There are many great virus protections out there, but every one of them will tell you that YOU and your decisions are the difference between privacy and heartache.

 

Computers crash, hardware fails, hard drives stop spinning and these things can devastate you as well, but they are events do not leave you open to ongoing criminal activity.

 

So say you get hit with a bout of Ransomeware, you realize the easiest way out is to hand over a thousand dollars and now your computer works again. Well, now someone has your personal information, your credit card and a copy of everything you had on your computer, not to mention, they likely left a little surprise behind that will be executed next year since they found one of us who is said to be born every minute.

 

It has been a long week, I will share with you the best way to avoid this nightmare later this week, but for now, treat everything as if it was a scam, shoot first, ask questions later. If the email came from someone you know but the body of the email was a simple link, let them know they have been hacked, this will help stop the propagation of these nasty viruses.

Promise details before 1/1/2015, until then, be safe.

 

(Image used has nothing to do with cyber crime, just a good looking model dressed as a criminal to get peoples attention, artist rights are reserved) my rights (writes) can be shared until the cows come home and I wish people would. But then again, I wish cows came home, apparently they don't. You can always find info or ask questions directly by visiting my website http://brooksnetworks.com click the flash video to enter the site.