anyone familiar with cryptolocker

[12312312313]

basically i had an email from a mail company saying an item has been detained with an attachment. long story short i downloaded it and it opened as .zip in winrar, i didnt click on it after that and deleted it after i downloaded it. i've scanned my pc with malware bytes but im still worried. can anyone help?

thanks

 

[Solandri]

If you didn't actually open anything contained in the zip file, you should be fine.

You say you're worried, which suggests you don't have backups of your data. Make it a priority to spend $50 on an external drive and backup at least your most important data. Then unplug the backup drive and store it in a safe place (hopefully off-site, like in your drawer at work - bring it home once a month to backup new files).

This will protect you from both malware and hard drive crashes. Based on the "Help!" calls I get, I'd say data loss due to a hard drive failure is about 3x more likely than data loss due to malware. So being careful to avoid malware offers relatively little protection from data loss.

 

[Avast-Team]

Definitely, backups

A few other things -- you may want to try Avast Free (shameless, I know) but we've added several next-gen components that help protect you in real time against ransomware, even unknown strains. Namely, Behavior Shield and CyberCapture.

Also, we have free ransomware decryptors available (for certain strains) that you can add to your toolbelt -- in the unfortunate event you do get infected, or need to help someone you know.