A Reflection on being careful

Recently, my niece had a problem with her pc whereby she was getting loads of pop-ups. This was not the main cause for her anguish. That was the fact that all her files, pictures etc had apparently disappeared from her disc drive folder My Documents.  This concerned years of work and quite understandably panic. I suspected that all was not lost and that the files were still on the disc drive, but maybe not where they should be.

I suggested that she boot the system into Safe Mode and do a search from the start menu and select pictures in the search. This she did and found all her files but said they were in a weird named folder. She copied these files to a DVD and put them safe on her laptop. I then suggested she download SpywareTerminator from www.spywareterminator.com and also get hold of a copy of SpyBot Search and Destroy, and keep running them until they find no more errors.

I had suspected, and this was confirmed by her, that she had been hit by a ransom program. This  is one that tells you it has hijacked your files and you will need to pay them to get them back. This instance it was to buy their spyware program which I doubt had in fact found any spyware, apart from their own. So, something to remember if it happens to you, your files are still on the disc drive but not in the folder they should be. Do a search from Safe Mode to find the files then copy them all to cd or dvd and put somewhere else, somewhere safe. Then do scans on the computer and keep doing until they find nothing, a clean sheet.

This is one of the main reasons for protecting yourself on the internet. Do make sure you have a very good antivirus program, firewall and spyware catcher programs. The free programs are good but even better are my personal favourites Norton Internet Security 2009 and Spyware Doctor from PCTools.  I know they might seem expensive but at least I sleep at night knowing our computers are very well protected. I cannot remember the last time we had a problem which went under the wire. If these programs warn me, I take no chances and block the offending program, site or email. I trust them completely.

Remember, when connected to the internet, protect yourself and surf safely.

 

David