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If the guy has an India-sounding accent and says his name is "Steve", "Bob" or the like, it's almost certainly a scam!
Posted on 05/12/2017 12:52:39 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
“If the guy has an India-sounding accent and says his name is “Steve”, “Bob” or the like, it’s almost certainly a scam!”
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Sometimes it’s a gal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVEiQnMnACc
Also, this advice:
“Just Hang Up: Why You Shouldn’t Taunt Fake Tech Support Scammers”
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/just-hang-shouldnt-taunt-fake-tech-support-scammers
The damage it can do to anyone should be sobering to all of us. I have a family friend who ignored my advice about backups and the value of a dedicated "internet surfing" computer. He got one of the latest ransomeware bugs and lost 6 months of data ("I'm too busy to do it now").
I even offered to set him up with a 2nd computer (for surfing the web) but he scoffed at me ("Too complicated!").
He's right about being too busy - what with spending all his freetime trying to recover all his stuff.
Who did it? North Korea?
I do a disk clone operation every month to both an external USB hard drive I keep in a safe deposit box at the bank, and another clone to an internal hard drive that I unmount after I image it.
I have lost data in the past. I can live with a month of data lost on my home computer, if that is what happens.
“Unfortunately the page that you requested does not exist.”
“Yet another advertizement for OSX and Linux”
I kept one of those Indian Microsoft scammers on the phone for 10 minutes once playing along with the con.
When I finally told him, “Windows?... no, i’m running Linux” he hung up.
I’ve heard “too busy” too many times.
I had it get onto a computer from an email that was supposedly from the Postal Service, but wasn’t. Cost me about $180.00 to have the machine purged. Fortunately, I had backup for the compromised files or could do without them.
Moral of the story: NEVER click an attachment to an email from anyone you don’t know and trust.
Full system image copy monthly - keep last six versions.
Nightly data only backups - keep 14 versions (not counting the monthly version).
It hard drive fails, you lose at most, one days data changes and whatever system changes in the last 30 days or less. Same if ransomware appears. Running an important computer, like my home one where I keep invaluable spreadsheets and information must be backed up systematically or you will at some point pay the heavy price of permanent data loss and massive time loss rebuilding your computer programs.
“Unfortunately the page that you requested does not exist.”
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Huh. Well, here’s the download & info page at Malwarebyte’s forum:
The current version is in the (updated from original announcement) first post, it’s beta8 - build 0.9.17.661.
“Introducing Malwarebytes Anti-Ransomware Beta”
https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/177751-introducing-malwarebytes-anti-ransomware-beta
I’ve also used “Cybereason RansomFree”, but I’m not as sure about it’s effectiveness. Also it creates quite a few fake folders that act as “honeypots” for ransomware.
Cybereason RansomFree
http://www.pcmag.com/review/352983/cybereason-ransomfree
“I had it get onto a computer from an email that was supposedly from the Postal Service, but wasn’t.”
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That’s a common scam - sometimes it “from” UPS, Fedex or other carrier.
“Nightly data only backups - keep 14 versions (not counting the monthly version).”
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Why 14? Where do you store the backups - on a seperate drive or the cloud?
Wouldn’t be easier to make incremental backups of your data - just saving the day to day changes and keeping maybe 3 backups at most?
Even worse than that, in my post #24 we determined that he was infected via a Word doc attachment that came to him from his attorney (or so it appeared). All the advice I had given him about scanning for viruses before opening an attachment (from anybody!) were ignored.
All attachments are suspect, even from people you know- their PC may be infected.
Just spent all day at work at the hospital with all my coworkers, making sure everything was patched.
I think sometimes people think I’m joking when I talk about capital punishment for people doing this stuff…
I’m not.
you can protect against anything including ransomware in a virtual machine
“you can protect against anything including ransomware in a virtual machine”
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I personally wouldn’t mess with ransomware, even in VM.
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