As technology actively develops, intruders use ever more sophisticated methods of stealing our money. We often get short messages to the mail or mobile device with links to some photos or programs that may "interest us", but, in fact, are viruses that get control over our mobile device or PC.
For example, you can post an advertisement on some ads platform about selling some product. A few hours later you get an SMS with an offer to exchange your good to another product with a link on the photos of this product. In fact, if you open this link on Android device, you download a special software, which transfers all your money to intruder’s account.
Another popular attack method is sending mail messages with link and text, which stimulates user to open this link. For example, intruder can offer you good job and you need to fill out a form by clicking on the link. As a result, your computer or mobile device will be infected with a trojan or a so-called "keylogger" that reads information from your hard drive, and records the keystrokes, and forwards all these data to the attacker. As a result of the analysis of the information received, the attacker will be able to determine your personal passwords and use them to steal money or personal information.
What is ransomware?
Ransomware is a fundamentally new way of earning money for intruders, which is based on human psychology. In this case, when you click on a link, your device is blocked, and you see the message like this: “You need to transfer 100$ in order to restore access to the device and prevent data loss. ”
Typically, when you open such link, special program code modifies registry or autorun files, and the user sees this message. Thus, even if you transfer money to intruder, nothing will change, and you still won’t get access to your device.
Nevertheless, there are more serious versions of ransomware, when you can lose all the information from your device. It should be noted, that in this case malware does not make any backups, so your information will be lost forever and no one can return it remotely.
Thus, it is necessary to use antivirus or special scripts to restore your system. In any case, don’t transfer money to intruders!
How to protect
First, it is necessary to keep the antivirus database up-to-date. In most cases, antivirus systems successfully prevent infection of the operating system.
Secondly, periodically back up your data. Use a removable external hard drive or cloud services to do this. If you lose your data from your device, you can always restore it without any problems.
Well, most importantly - be vigilant. According to statistics, in most cases malware infects computer or a mobile device when opening an attachment to a letter in your postbox, for example when opening an attached picture. Never open attachments to messages received from unknown recipients. The best way to protect against such messages is to use temporary mailboxes to hide your presence in web and filter out the most suspicious messages. According to statistics, temporary mailboxes are least susceptible to attacks of this kind, since their life span is limited.
Summary
Don’t open mails from unknown persons and never open attachments to such mails.
If your device has been blocked, never send money to intruder, since your device won’t be unlocked. To solve the problem, use antivirus or special scripts.
Use disposable mail because it allows you to protect yourself from mails with attached malware.
