Most people over the last week have seen reports about the new ransom-ware that has been released and is infecting computers worldwide. Some big companies like Fed-Ex and even the English health care system have had outages due to this new bug. And I have already gotten many calls and emails about it since the week began.
So what can you do about it? Well first as with all computer problems the best insurance is a good backup stored in a location under your control. The virus can not encrypt files it has no access to. So a back up on a external hard drive not attached to your computer is ideal.
Next the older your O/S the higher your chance of getting this or many of the other viruses floating around the Internet. So update to a current O/S and make sure you keep up with the current security patches. Which you can find here.
Last practice safe hex (old computer joke)…
Don’t click on links from unknown sources. Don’t read email from people you do not know or with weird spam like subject lines. Don’t visit download and porn sites. Use a modern antivirus products (that are also updated).
If none of this makes sense or your not sure you have followed these instructions correctly, feel free to give RenoGeek a call to setup a service call to double check your security.