Why are they doing this?
Tidbit

                                                                                    By Stephen Speregen
                                                                                         Managing Editor

I don't have anything they want?

         Oh yes you do!
Your connection to the internet so they can poison other computers!

Then there are the thief's and con artist that try to con you out of your money in a number of ways.
Such as the Nigeria scam, the lottery scam, Canadian scams (phone or internet) and a whole lot more.

One place to check out scams is snopes.com

If you get an email from a friend how do you know he hasn't been compromised or is just trying to show how
smart he thinks he is by confirming the problem in the first place telling you to click on his link to snopes.com.

Don't ever click on links in emails type it out yourself and you will have less stress than if you clicked on a hijacked link embedded in an email.

If you have QuickBooks or any other accounting program you can write checks out of please make sure you have a password phrase of 15 characters or more (doesn't save it to a SId,  (Security Identifier) which if you have been hacked can be seen in clear text format under 14 characters.  But passwords are another chapter. They can get into your accounting programs, download your backups and write checks till the cows come. They can forge or just put Signature on file and it will get cashed or deposited in some off shore bank.
 

Some will even make your computer a zombie that they can use to cause denial of service (DNS) attacks and or spread their malware to others in your email list or one's they provide, Bad part is you would not know they are doing it and your computer slows downs to a crawl is the only sign you might see.
 

The average cost to clean up a infected computer is about $160.00 US to a computer reload which could take 4 to 10 hours depending on how many programs you have loaded and the size of your personal data (Docs, Excel spread sheets, Pictures, music, saved websites to name just a few.) not to mention 2 to 3 hours of updates from Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia Flash and your anti virus to name just a few.

Then you have the megalomaniacs who just want to prove to themselves they can do it (all about control) and showing how smart they thick they are!

Either way it is a mine field that we are walking into blindfolded and drunk!

Open your eyes and be careful where you go on the internet.
 

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