They could probably make more money if they lowered the ransom. Who's going to pay $500?
Promise of ‘higher profits’ sees US targeted by Android PIN-locking ransomware
Android PIN-locking ransomware, which – unbeknown to the user – changes a device's login code, is targeting mobile phone users in North America, leaving victims with a locked screen and a demand for $500. However, since the PIN is reset randomly even complying with these extortionate demands won’t do any good, as not even the …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 10th September 2015 13:51 GMT niksgarage
Surely people have their phones backed up?
My phone - and wifey's phone - stores all data in the Cloud, including messages, mails, contacts and the huge collection of photos of grandchildren, bits of whiteboard from work and all that. Applications are easily downloaded from the appropriate store again. Recently, when there was a firmware upgrade, I decided to test the remote wipe and reset to factory settings just for grins. It took less than an hour for the phone to be restored to its former glory. How much is an hour of my time worth?
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Thursday 10th September 2015 13:54 GMT Spanners
There is not much data on my phone.
My stuff is in the cloud(s).
My email and contacts are in Gmail, or whatever other ones I use.
Photos are synced away pretty instantly. It stops some idiot telling me that I "can't take pictures here" and forcing me to delete them.
Documents I edit are generally on Box, Google Docs or whatever.
Things like Evernote, Onenote and so on deal with notes.
What do I use all the space for? Music, podcasts, audiobooks, ebooks and so on.
An unwanted factory reset would be irritating but not disastrous. I would just have to re-download them again.
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Thursday 10th September 2015 13:55 GMT TeeCee
Amateurs.
You get infected, it’s a factory reset, sorry
We've already seen scroteware that sticks itself in the system partition so it survives a factory reset. Easy to do if you have privilege, which this one seems to require for installation to work anyway. This is second-rate crud from pathetic also-rans.
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Friday 11th September 2015 05:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
"And for 99.9999999% of the rest of the world, Google synch is probably a better option."
Good for the rest of the world. I don't see anyone suggesting the rest of the world go away and setup OwnCloud, both of us have simply stated that OwnCloud is a good choice *if* you want control of where your devices are synching to.
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