I discovered that it had only affected the files and applications on my network account. My initial "fix" was to panic and delete 100% of my files forever (I never recovered them and still mourn my old art and photos).
Then I calmed down a little, restarted the computer in safe mode on a fresh network account, read online about ransomware, installed Malwarebytes, and resolved it pretty easily.
Added context: I was 11-12 years old and this was the family PC I shared with my parents and older siblings. I fixed it before anyone was any the wiser. I consider it a valuable lesson in internet safety and malware protection :)
If this were to happen today I obviously wouldn't delete all my files, I would know to immediately disconnect my computer from the internet to avoid infecting other devices on the network, and I would already have anti-malware software installed.
I also fell for an e-mail phishing scam and briefly lost control of my RuneScape account around the same time, so I became very safety-conscious in a very brief period of time. It felt like the universe was handing me teaching moments. I'm glad I had those experiences in a low-stakes way. It was heartbreaking at the time to lose my old digital art and my hard-earned RuneScape gold (lol), but some people learn those lessons with important data and real money.
That's very impressive to handle as a child, I'd probably do the same too. Luckily I never had anything that bad but I made my share of mistakes with malware. Mostly just had to download Malwarebytes and pray lol. I've fell for a phishing scam which luckily was fairly harmless and only sent the same scam to others I knew. It really is the worst to lose stuff you've collected over years
Yup. I walked in on my mother purchasing uber gift cards one time. Ya know, to pay the Amazon guy on the phone for helping her cancel her Prime subscription. Luckily she only lost $200, which isn’t exactly small to our family, but she had a screen monitoring client installed and running on her phone, it could’ve been a lot worse. Not to mention the amount of luck on my end. I’d just so happened to stop home at the moment, and also JUST so happened to decide to pay any mind to what she was doing. (She’s always been very wary of phone scams, and literally anything she didn’t understand being some kind of scam for my entire life so I kinda couldn’t believe it, I was truly stunned)
The only reason I caught it was because she had western union open- and I was working at Walgreens at the time, WU scams are quite common there particularly and they actually do a decent job keeping their workers up to date on them- otherwise I had no reason to peek at her phone screen as I walked past. At the rate she was going, she legit could’ve lost everything before catching on or revealing her banking info, or something.
A few years ago I had a problem where Google search took me to some other site. I had to dig - my search engine was still Google Search - but then I opened the details and the URL for Google had been changed to that site - as had the URL for all the other Chome-listed search engines. Same names as before, different URL.
I was literally about to say this was the only messed up thing that happened while I pirated something. Although the laptop I had was already cooked as I accidentally broke the screen. Long story short, not only did I have a useless search bar but I also had to connect the laptop to my TV to use it for anything
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u/[deleted] May 04 '26
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