Tip Of The Week: How To Fight Ransomware

If you use the Internet, then you’re sure to have encountered screen lockers. You may be one of the unlucky people who have encountered that embarrassing moment when an explicit picture pops up, covering your entire 24″ screen, demanding you pay a tidy sum of money to avoid your coworkers’ stares. Or maybe you’ve dealt with ransomware, and have been asked for a miraculous code that removes the “FBI computer lock?”

Those banners are actually indicators that your computer has been attacked by criminals who are using screen-locking malware to blackmail you. Programs of this kind limit your abilities to use your own computer; they can block your screen and/or keyboard and limit access to your taskbar and shortcuts. They may threaten you in various ways, but they will all ask for ransom in order to restore your system to a normal state.

With the new Kaspersky Internet Security you can enjoy a new function that is called Protection against screen lockers. With the help of this feature, you’ll be able to block blackmailers with a simple keyboard shortcut.

To ensure that the function is activated or to set your own key combination, click the Settings link in the main program window. In the Protection Center component, choose System Watcher and make sure that in the Protection against screen lockers section, the Detect and close screen lockers check box is selected.

Here, in the dropdown list, you can select a combination of keys, which, when pressed, will enable protection against screen lockers to either detect and delete them.