Never Pay Ransoms - Two Free Things You Can Do to Stop Ransomware

<p>[A quick, automated transcript of my conversation with Jim Polito on WTAG, WHYN, and WHJJ on 2021-05-18]</p> <p>Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Mr. Polito this morning, and we went through the colonial pipeline and why you don't want to pay a ransom. And then I went into the things you can do for free. That'll give you 90%, maybe a little higher protection. So some websites to go to some things to do on a windows computer.</p> <p>So it went a little deeper, I think, than I usually. Go into, but I think a lot of great info. So here we go with Mr. Polito. </p> <p>If I ever got hacked, ransomware, whatever there's one guy had called, not the Ghostbusters. I would call our tech talk guru and good friend, Craig Peterson, who joins us every week at this time.</p> <p>Good morning, sir. </p> <p>Hey, good morning, Mr. Jim. </p> <p>Craig, why don't you just say, I told you so because they, it looks like colonial paid the $5 million ransom, the stories I'm reading say that then the Russian hackers gave them the key to fix the encryption, and it didn't work. And then they eventually figured it out themselves.</p> <p>Am I correct? Yeah. </p> <p>Yeah. That's pretty much what happened.</p> <p> Brilliant guy because that's called colonial pipeline. So you said, and you have said many times before, the easiest way to get yourself in the crosshairs of a cyber hacker, ransomware criminal is to pay the ransom. Then you have painted a bullseye on your back.</p> <p>Why don't you tell us about that? </p> <p>Yeah, we have a whole country thing. You might remember. There was an organization called the United States Navy. And the United States Marine Corps. And you remember, the Marine Corps Anthem, right? </p> <p>Oh yeah. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, the barber.</p> <p>Okay. And why did they form the Marine Corps? Why did the Navy come to be? It came to be in both cases to protect our merchants, our merchant leads; we were having some problems with some alumnus back 250 years ago. A