Over the years, I’ve helped dozens of Lasquetians detect, avoid, or recover from cyber-attacks. In the next few Tech Talk articles I’ll write about some practical steps you can take to improve your online safety. But to start, an anecdote about one of the ne’er-do-wells from halfway across the globe who managed to infiltrate our little corner of paradise with bad intent.

   

Aster (name changed) often calls for help with her email or login problems. This time she was having trouble installing a program. “I think I have a virus” she started. “This nice man from Microsoft called to say they detected a virus on my computer. He helped me download this free program to clean the virus off. Isn’t that sweet? Anyhow, I got it downloaded, but we tried for ½ hour to install it. I just couldn’t get it to work. Could you help?”

   

Never had I been so glad for her tech-challenges. Of course, the nice man was not from Microsoft. And the program was malware, probably programmed to lock her computer so the scammer could demand a ransom. Or, maybe it would appear to remove “the virus”, then run silently in the background, stealthily sending banking passwords, credit card numbers, and other private data back to the hacker without a trace. In any case, Aster, beautiful, trusting soul, fell for a similar scam about a year later but this time managed to get the darned program to work. Luckily, she also realized, just a little too late, she’d been tricked again. We used a backup to remove the malware and she agreed to hang up on any future callers from Microsoft (or Google, or Facebook, or Amazon, or…).

   

It can happen so easily to any of us. Next month I’ll discuss some of the reasons the Internet is such a haven for scammers, why it seems to be so insecure, and some simple things you can do to keep yourself safe.