The internet has become so ubiquitous and necessary, it’s hard to go a day without using it. It’s where we get most of the information about the world, a great part of our social interactions happen there, and a big portion of our work time is spent online. However, the internet isn’t as safe as some people would like to think it is. Most of its contents are safe, but some of them contain malicious viruses that can seriously compromise all of your information.
One of those malicious viruses is the cryptolocker. It’s a virus that encrypts the victims’ files and then refuses to let you open them unless you pay money for a key. Most of these viruses come from either email attachments or infected websites, so you have to be careful and mind what kind of links you click as well as the files you download.
You can perform cryptolocker removal on your own, or you can call for some professional help which, in my humble opinion, is the safer and more cost-effective option, especially if the cryptolocker removal needs to be performed on a business PC.
In order to prevent a cryptolocker from doing any serious damage, you should back-up all of your important data and store it externally, on a hard disk or USB. Moreover, you should keep your anti-virus up to date, as the cryptolocker is constantly being worked on and improved, allowing scammers to bypass out-of-date anti-malware software. I cannot stress the importance of having up-to-date protection software enough. A reputable anti-virus program like Avast, Avira, Kaspersky, etc. should be enough to keep you safe.
If you’ve already been infected, you need to find a way to eliminate the attacker. You can do that by going through windows’ Safe Mode and running an on-demand virus scanner. However, if the virus prevents you from doing so, you’ll have to use System Restore to roll your system back in time. Performing a rollback won’t affect your personal files, but it will return system files and programs to the state they were at a certain time.
But as the old saying goes, it’s better to prevent than to cure, and this also applies to computers. Securing your computer from day 1 and keeping up with the latest updates might seem like an inconvenience at first, but it’s not as big of an inconvenience as having it infested with all types of malware, so it’s definitely something worth doing. And remember – having a good backup system is crucial, just in case your PC does get infected and you can’t recover your files.
