Possible Russian Gozi Virus Infection at YOCC Client Site

This week, I worked with a client that believes his computer could have been infected with the recently reported Russion Gozi Virus.

While the diagnosis is not positively confirmed, it gave me pause to think about how folks can protect themselves (as best as possible) from such unwanted intrusions.

I do realize that many have already documented the following, and I'm choosing to do it again in the event someone stumbles onto my site before they reach others that could also help. So, here goes.

Want to protect yourself from intrusions?

1. Don't ever open e-mails, let alone attachments, from unknown or untrusted sources.
2. Do your best to have some valid intrusion protection on your pc or Mac. Primary recent options include: MacAfee, Symantec, and Verizon.net. If you have a quality cable Internet Service Provider, you may have access to free copies of McAfee protection products. Not sure about the others.
3. Don't visit risky sites. In addition to the obvious ones, watch out for sites that simply do not "seem" or "feel" legitimate - e.g. offers for virus protection software from unsolicited sources. If possible, don't even click on them or their windows.
4. In the PC case, try ending the intrusion via options on your control panel. Or more simply doing a hard shutdown (forced or otherwise) of your system - PRIOR to touching anything suspect in ANY fashion.
5. Make a plan and work the plan to have valid restore points (both programs and data) on your computer system - both internal and external to the system, if possible.
6. Make a plan and work the plan to store at least the data you care about at an offsite secure location. One valid tactic in this regard could be using cloud backup services such as the one available at http://www.carbonite.com/. Kindly note that YOCC is an approved re-seller for Activation Keys for Carbonite services.

In the case of my client this week, they had taken none of the above precautions. So, their only choice was to re-install Windows on their machine - thereby wiping out all data on the machine.

My hope is that any or all of the above prove to be useful to others in terms of protecting themselves from unwanted intrusions - virile and otherwise.

Feedback always welcome at denny@yourcomputerconsultant.com.

If you want more information, please visit my website at http://www.yourowncomputerconsultant.com/ or my blog at http://yourowncomputerconsultantblogs.blogspot.com/