Ransomware nearly got me on a Tuesday, what a mess

Last week I almost lost my whole small shop's client files to ransomware. I clicked a link in an email that looked like it was from my bank, and suddenly my screen locked up with a Bitcoin demand for $800. I panicked, but luckily I had a backup from the night before on an external drive, so I just wiped the system and restored everything. It cost me about 6 hours of work and a lot of stress, but no money lost. Turns out my firewall and antivirus didn't catch it because I had auto-run enabled on my USB ports. Has anyone else had a close call like this, and do you disable autorun on your machines too?

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wood.zara14d ago

And honestly your story fits a pattern I see everywhere now. People only think about security after something bad happens, and even then it's usually the bare minimum. I mean, who actually reads those popup warnings or changes default settings? Almost nobody. It's like we treat our digital stuff like we treat our car maintenance, we just ignore it until the engine light comes on and then we're shocked it costs money. The autorun thing is a perfect example, it's one of those settings that's on by default and most folks never touch it. You got lucky with that backup, but a lot of people wouldn't even have that, they'd just pay the ransom and hope. It takes one bad Tuesday to make you realize all that stuff you skipped was actually the important part.