Remember the good old days when criminals hacked into your computer to steal your bank and personal information and they did it discreetly, so that you didn’t notice the theft for days, weeks, or years? You might never have noticed if you hadn’t received foreclosure notices for a house in Kentucky you didn’t know you owned, or if a repo guy didn’t show up to tow a car you never had.
Today’s criminals are gutsy. Not only do they hack into your computer, but they gloat about it, and then demand payment to return your files. Once you pay, what’s to stop them from doing it again? They can ride this money train into the cyberspace sunset.
Check out this email thread that my husband started yesterday on Facebook. His story is true.
8/2/2016
Frank (my husband): My desktop computer at work was hacked. I opened up an email and all of my files were encrypted. I rebooted and then a ransom note appeared saying I had three days to pay in bitcoin currency to get my files decrypted. How crazy is this? Our IT guy is on the case!
Karen E: Damn hackers!
Me: I wonder if modern computer kidnappers talk like old-school people-kidnappers?: “Vee hoff your computair. Send many bitcoin now.”
Art K: Isn’t Paul B an IT expert?????? He may need to be called into the case.
Paul B: Bummer Frank. If u send me the bitcoins I may be able to fix.
Ron B: Good luck Frank. I had the same thing happen to me. The hacker turned on my laptop camera and took a picture of me and threatened to turn over all the “dirt” he could dig up on me. I was able to power down for a day then put a paper clip in the reset button and most of my files were saved. I’m sure there’s a better way but I’m no computer geek.
Me: Did you see “Burn After Reading”? Maybe they were going to give it to the Russians. Haha.
Ron B: Once I knew it was a scam, it was actually hysterical. It had a picture of Pres. Obama saluting the flag and authorizing that I pay the money. The only part that was not hysterical was that I did lose some files and lots of pictures.
Leo C: It was the DNC.
8/3/2016
Dano P: Search for the Trend Micro ransomware removal and decryption tools.
Frank: Yeah, my IT guy just added that and he just told me that my backup drive was encrypted as well! This sucks!!!
Dano P: Send bitcoin to ComradeArrakis@TheBigQ.net.
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