Quote:
Originally Posted by Venus
Due to the snow I am home today and welcome the time. About 10 days ago I opened my laptop and saw an orange/red screen that had a count down screen clock with a message telling me to send $400 to Cryptolocker via the link posted or lose my files.  Apparently, this is the insidious Cryptolocker virus that has attacked about 40,000 laptops since November. I immediately took action by calling Microsoft. I have been working on this every night until very late but still lost a great deal of my files. Most pictures, vids, word documents, excel files and more. Fortunately I back up often but haphazardly. Microsoft was a nightmare to work with. I was on the phone every night with someone whose accent made it very hard for me to understand her. She said she was a level 2 and kept telling me she would call me back in a few minutes which was always hours later. I was in Manhattan all week so I didn't have a lot of my flash drives with me. I lost Outlook and she kept telling me I never had it. I almost went crazy. BTW, Microsoft charged me for this service.....and still I am not done, if ever.
The positive is that I didn't for one second entertain sending Cryptolocker one cent. And I had just backed up my Calibre Library the night before.
So, I haven't bought or read anything. I thought I would post this to warn all of you. I am now working hard towards my HEA. |
Oh goodness girl! I'm sorry. I read it's spread through email attachments. I have learned never to open any attachments from any company or anyone. I don't think I would called Microsoft though. I'm not sure what they could do.
What I would do is immediately shut down the PC and use Ubuntu Live CD to mount the drive and copy what files to an external drive that I want to keep. I read as you try to access stuff it keeps encrypting files so the sooner you shut down the better. So once you got what files left you can back up I would then reformat the drive and reinstall everything from scratch.
By using the Live CD the malware can't run while you copy your files as it only works in a Windows Environment. If your laptop is like mine and has no CD drive you can run Ubuntu from a flash drive. I can't tell how many times that Ubuntu has save me from losing files when my hard drive would crash or start to die. I think every person should have a copy of it. It's free too.