How To Beat Ransomware: Don’t Panic

Picture yourself spending weeks working on a special anniversary tribute video for your friend’s upcoming 30th wedding anniversary. Over the years you’ve collected a variety of video clips and photos and edited them into a great video. You’ve taken the time to lay it all over a soundtrack with their favorite songs and you’re proud of your labor of love.

As you finish the project and prepare to copy it onto a DVD for the big day, a weird message pops up on your computer.”Files on this computer system are now encrypted. You must pay within 96 hours or forfeit all of your documents and information on your computer system as it will be destroyed permanently.” Oh no! You’ve just been hit with ransomware.

Sadly, it appears that once you’ve been hit with ransomware, the files have been encrypted and there’s little that you can do except cut your loss and pay the fiddler. Sadly, even if you do pay, there’s no guarantee that you’ll have your files back. You may wind up with no files and out the bucks. For many around the world, this happened recently. For others, the stakes are very high. With the outbreak of WannaCryt0r, they lost everything. Hospitals lost important and vital information regarding their patients. They were frozen out of their computer systems and it disrupted their operations and the organizations of over 150 countries.

Such attacks have devastating impact on many computer systems. Many have lost precious data and it shut down at least one hospital’s computer system in the midst of an emergency procedure. For many, this quickly became life and death and it was a serious crisis.

One simple way to prevent such attacks at your place is to install a high level security software on your pc’s and devices . The best one is Norton Security suite and for a small cost per year it will save you a lot of heart ache in the long run, Note they send out deals and coupons from partner sites like this one each month so sign up and wait for a good deal then sign up.

Types Of Ransomware – Step one in preventing ransomware is to recognize the various kinds of ransomware that may hit you. It can range from mild to moderate to that which could set off a Cuban Missile Crisis.

Scareware – Yes, that’s really the name, scareware. When compared to other kinds of ransomware, it may not be as frightening, however, Scareware involves rogue security software and tech support scams that many fall for. It may send up pop-ups that frighten you yet your files are still safe. Quickly scanning your system you’ll find that there isn’t anything seriously wrong and your security system can clear it out easily. All you have to do is follow the easy to follow the step-by-step guide to ensure that your computer is safe.

Pro-Tip – Real good cyber security software won’t solicit customers in this fashion. If you don’t have this company’s software already on your computer, then you may need to do some updates, the other company may be spying on you and watching you. If you do have the software, you need to watch for tricks that make you think you don’t have it and that make you think you need to pay for more software to remove it. If you have the software already installed, you won’t have to pay for it to remove the malware, it will already be doing this.

Screen Locks – Upgrade your system to terror alert orange. Screen locks may mean that you are frozen out of your system. This may be accompanied by an official appearing FBI or U.S.l Dept. Of Justice seal that states illegal activities have been detected and you must pay a fine.

To reclaim the control of your system, you may have to pay a fee but again, there’s no guarantee. Best case scenario is to do a system restore and if that won’t work, you can run a scan from your bootable CD or a USB drive.