In the old days, computer hijackers would simply steal your bank account information, credit card numbers, and other personal information and bleed your accounts dry, set up a bunch of fake credit cards, and that sort of thing.  If they weren’t those sort of hackers, they’d hijack your computer directly via trojan horses, install your machine as part of a bot net, and do nefarious feats with your computer as an unwitting host animal.  Both of those can be very profitable, but they’re also incredibly hard work.

Leave it to hackers to think up an easy way to separate you from your credit card information and/or hard-earned money directly.  It’s the latest trend in computer scamware.  Known as hijackware or ransomware, it’s basically a computer virus or piece of malware that is designed to block you from using your computer until you fork over a fee.  MSNBC’s Red Tape Chronicles has the full story on these evil programs.

In some cases, ransomware works off scare tactics, telling you that your computer has a virus (which it does) and that you need to buy an upgrade to some generic antivirus software program to get rid of it.  Those are the more harmless scamware programs.  The other, more destructive program actually encrypts your entire computer and forces you to pay a subscription fee to decrypt your hard drive.

The way to be wise of these programs is to know your computer.  Know your antivirus software’s name and what its warnings look like, and always keep it up to date.  If you have Norton or McAfee or something else you pay a fee for, I recommend dropping it in favor of AVG, which works better than either of those programs could dream of and is completely free for personal users (I’d even recommend buying the upgraded version of AVG to support the great job the company does).  Add in a secondary ad blocker like AdBlock Plus, just to be at max safety level.  Run a firewall, run adware removers (like AdAware or Spybod Search and Destroy) and for the love of all things electronic, be careful about what you’re clicking on!

There is no computer OS, program, or browser that can protect the user from the person behind the keyboard.  You are the cause of most of your security problems.  Browse smart, people!