About once per day, sometimes more I get a call from a client who thinks they may have a virus. Often times these are spam/scam pop-up internet windows telling the user they are infected and to call a specific number for a resolution. Most of our clients have the suspicion that this doesn’t seem right (which it isn’t of course) and call me before calling the number on the screen. Our clients also get the constant ‘windows support’ phone call from telling them they have an infected computer, this, of course, is also a scam call. Once in a while though we do see actual problems.

The 3 best tips I can offer to keep in mind are:

1. NEVER click on a pop-up window from your browser. Don’t click the ‘ok’ ‘close’ or any other button on that pop-up… If your system anti-virus does actually detect a threat the window that pops up will be from that anti-virus program and NOT an internet browser example, chrome, Edge, Firefox, I.E…
2. If you DO get an alert that is not a browser and not your anti-virus with any message about “encrypting” or “securing” your files, unplug the computer. Literally unplug the power from the wall immediately. This can stop the potential spread of a crypto-style virus from getting any worse.
3. Trust your gut… If your system is acting noticeably different that it does on any normal day, something might be wrong. We would much rather you call and have a false alarm rather than letting a virus sit on the network for hours and wreak havoc on the system causing a much larger and more costly repair process.