For PC Virus Victims, Pay or Else

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/technology/ransomware-is-expanding-in-the-united-states.html?hpw

 

The newspaper article your link referred to said that this has been going on since 2009 in E. Europe.
I have a friend that got hit with this a few months ago.
My wife last night got called by the gang that says they have detected problems on our Windows (of which there isn't one in our house. My wife started laughing at the lady, who got hostile before she hung up).
My question is: If governments can shut down pirates because of the money, why can't they stop this nonsense? These scams don't affect one or two people. They are epidemics.

 

These kind of Police Ransomware are always up to date...

It seems that now it is speaking with users to pay... :
http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/latest-on-police-ransomware-it-speaks/

A year ago I rid of one of these Ransomware, in a PC of my cousin; she phoned me in panic, since their computer was locked with a National Police warning to her...

. HitmanPro.Kickstart can help with these talkers... In Wilders info about: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=2152752#post2152752

 

Money is exactly the problem. There isn't any of it to be made by law enforcement. As a victim of identity theft law enforcement did nothing and I got calls from bill collectors for 11 years.

Keep regular backups, there is not a lot else you can do if you get hit by something like this. I would never try to clean a machine infected by garbage like this. I wouldn't trust it. I would wipe it and restore the last known good backup.

 

That's the reason I always keep a clean image
if ANYTHING funny happens to my PC
or any type of infection, I always re-image
do not even try to clean it

But ever since I started running XP with most of the bloat removed
I've never had a infection since, I find a lot of code will
not run on my system now, but yet all my needed programs will
or I just add back what code is needed to run or find a like program that will