Quote from: toddball on April 27, 2015, 10:20:53 PM

I only stopped in here to thank you guys for your time and let you know what I decided to do.....

I'll set the remaining facts straight for those that would prefer to make up your own. Roll Eyes

I got the Teslacrypt virus. I'm not sure how. I haven't had a virus in years. Water under the bridge at this point......

This isn't the normal kind of virus most of us have gotten from a friend's email or some bad advertising malware. It encrypted all of my files, without the key it's just like deleting them. As far as I was aware before this, the concept was something out of the movies. I didn't know that there were viruses that severe that regular people could get.

I'm an independent consultant. I got the job in a hurry, and had to get set up to work from home in a hurry. It's been a-holes and elbows since then, for 6 months now. The only assistance I've had from the companies IT was the installation of the AV software. It's a small company, even the IT guy is an outside contractor.

I checked my "continuous backup drive" and the dates on the backup file that I believed contained my files was old, this led me to believe something went wrong and I did not have a recent backup. I'm a mechanical engineer, not a computer specialist.

I decided not to pay the ransom. Mostly because I don't have the means where I live to easily get bitcoins to pay the ransom. Danny H, who offered to help me, said that was probably the smartest thing to do anyway and I thanked him for his help.

I found when I restored from the backup that in fact it was an incremental backup, and I had files from my last backup from the end of March. I left for a prototype build in S. Illinois right after that and didn't really author too many new files between then and now, so I'm not losing a lot - but I didn't know that when I came here in a panic.

Why did I come here? Someone was pretty hot and bothered about that. Well like I said, I was having a tough time figuring out how to buy the coins with the payment means that I have available. And so many places that claim to be exchanges that I signed up for and haven't heard anything since.

And I lack patience, and like many of us, I use the internet for information gathering - Don't you? Or do you just automatically know everything, Mr BCWinning?

Whatever, you're a chump for saying what you did. I'm no crook and I found the advice I was looking for. So it seems I'm a little smarter than you think. And BTW, I'm not a troll either, I don't know what gave you that idea. I was in a panic over lost data in a critical portion of a prototype development, and I'm the entire engineering department on this, so I had a right to become a little panicked.

To the rest of you that were helpful, thanks again very much.

In the end, I lost alot of time, was able to recover the Bill of Material from the hackers "free trial" download, and so only lost several other files that I can recreate. I got off super lucky.

This won't happen again, as soon as my computer and data are back up and running IT is going to get me connected to their network for regular backups.

Thanks again everyone

Toddball

PS Danny just saw your post... So I guess they are the trolls you warned about. Hah. I don't like being accused of trolling. Live and Learn. You guys are alright by me. Good Luck

You don't use it (the internet for information gathering) very well to come here make your first post whining about how you got a virus from being stupid and can't buy btc at market price.