This year (2016), I am already seeing a lot of Phishing Scams coming under the guise of being from Australia Post.

Phishing Scams are scams which attempt to try and get personal information from you by tricking you some way, usually by gaining your trust.

There have been a lot of Phishing Scam attempts performed by criminals pretending to be AusPost, but in recent months I have seen it stepped up a lot.  Instead of trying to get personal information from you, they are tricking you into downloading a program which locks you out of your computer until you pay their ransom.

I do not recommend to anyone to pay the Ransom.

I have never seen nor heard anyone who has paid the ransom and had their computer and files released.  They simply just take off with your money and if you give them your credit card, share it among other criminals and rack up the charges.

Most of the times with Ransomware they encrypt your files so you are unable to fix them to or release them. This is bad enough, without having to add thousands of dollars in credit card charges as well.

How to stay Protected

Many antivirus programs claim to be able to stop Ransomware but very few actually do. In fact, I go to peoples homes and businesses every day with computer viruses, and they all have some form of protection on their computer. I guess something is better than nothing, but they are by no means 100% proof.

Common Sense

Common sense is your best protection. If a bank asks you to login to your account, give them a call first and make sure it is from them.  If you are not expecting a Parcel don’t open the email and if you are, ask yourself why do you need to install their software to get your parcel.

We all know not to trust the internet, but for some reason people do let their guards down online. If someone knocked on our door claiming to be the prince of Nigeria and wanted to give you $100,000,000 you would slam the door in their face, but when its an email we open it. So don’t!

Anti-Ransomware

Malwarebytes have come up with a great little program which is showing a lot of promise is stopping ransomware.

These type of defenders work a lot better if they are installed on your computer before the problem occurs. You can read more about Malwarebytes Anti-Ransomware here.

But again i warn you, it is not 100% guaranteed to work and it doesn’t claim to be. Plus there are so many ransomware programs being developed every day I can see how any antivirus protection could possible keep up.