Do you have an extra $300?

Do you have an extra $300 laying around that you just want to give away?  If yes, please contact me.  Most of us of course would say no.  

If you don't have the extra money, don't open attachments in your e-mail unless you are expecting them and know who has sent them to you.  

Recently, a new virus has been proliferating across the internet and across computers.  This virus encrypts (or locks) your files so they can't be used.  It displays a message like the one in the attached photo and they only way to get your files back is to pay the $300.   


Anti-Virus companies are scrambling to find a fix for this but it may be quite a while if ever before they come up with a solution.  Thus far, paying the ransom does seem to get your files decrypted, so if you don't have a good backup this may be your only solution :-(

We just spent 7 hours working with a business where one user had opened an attachment and because he was connected to a network, it infected all the server drives and encrypted all the data.  The end result is we had to restore all the files from a backup.. It took a long time and was a huge headache. 

So how to prevent this from ruining your day?  It makes no difference if you are a home user or a small business.  1. BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP.... did I mention backup?  2. Do NOT open e-mail attachments.  If you must, make sure the person sending you the attachment has a reason to send it to you.  You may even need to call them to verify.  A lot of these scam e-mails look very legit.  3. Make sure to keep your anti-virus and spyware software up to date, they can't find viruses if they don't know about them.

Stay safe out there...