Ransomware

Ransomware has been in the news recently. While I have known people who have victimized by ransomware, they are quite rare. They paid the $300 and got the encryption key and were able to recover their PC. Recently, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack appears to have netted the attackers $4.4 million. The attackers apparently netted $90 million in total before shutting up and presumably retiring or reorganizing. That article is HERE. 

I think for me, I’d just reformat my drive and start over. Hopefully everyone out there reading this has a good backup of what they would NOT want to lose, and has that safely in a drawer somewhere. My brother in law, David, sent me an interesting link about ransomware. Two actually. One link was saying Windows 10 had anti-ransomware software that you could activate, however neither he nor I were able to do so. The other link was a sensible discussion about ransomware, what it is, how to avoid it, and what to do if you get it. That article is HERE.
 
I’ve spoken about backing up your critical data for years. Have you done that lately? Pictures and documents are typically the biggies. A good option is to back data up to a service that has anti-encryption built in, like Microsoft OneDrive. Whatever you choose, don’t keep putting it off.