Spent 4 hours fighting a ransomware infection that was just a locked screen

Last Tuesday I clicked on a sketchy email attachment at work and my screen went black with a big red banner demanding $500 in Bitcoin. I freaked out and spent hours Googling solutions, running scans, and trying safe mode. Turns out it was just a browser-based lock screen, not actual ransomware encrypting my files. Took me 4 hours to realize I could just close Chrome and delete the browser history. Has anyone else wasted a ton of time on a scam that was way simpler than it looked?

2 comments

2 Comments

jessicaflores12d ago

Nah 4 hours of learning is cheap for that lesson.

gray612d ago

That's a good point @jessicaflores. It's funny how we'll spend years learning the wrong way then act like a few hours of real education is too much. I see it with jobs too, people waste months doing things the hard way at work instead of spending a day getting trained properly. Same thing with cooking or fixing stuff around the house... you mess up a few times then finally watch a video for 20 minutes and it all clicks. The lesson is usually the cheap part compared to all the trial and error.