A recent Kaspersky study, in over 5.000 people in Canada and the US, reveals that even though nowadays ransomware is the most widespread and dangerous malware, many users have no idea what it is and what it does.
And while cyber security officials sweat just thinking they might fall victim to blackmail, 43% of cyber users researchs stated that they do not know what it is ransomware.
Kaspersky says that surveyed users seemed more fearful of other malware categories, such as viruses, trojans, spyware etc, and that only 16% of about 5.000 users said they were also afraid of ransomware.
There was also an extra 9% that ransomware is about hacking into a social media account for ransom.
This lack of knowledge about what a ransomware is, explains why a large part of users have never dealt with it theme. A quarter of survey participants said the best method to clean up a ransomware infection is to disconnect the computer from the Internet, which actually doesn't help at all.
In addition, the 15% of Americans and the 17% of Canadians believe that disabling the device will solve their problem. This practice may prove dangerous for certain infections, especially if ransomware files encrypt at that particular moment, resulting in the cessation of the encryption process in some cases leading to permanent damage to the data.
Of course, for some ransomware categories, this technique could save the user's data, but the whole logic looks more like Russian roulette, and it is good you do not.
Also, in a related question from the survey, 53% of users said they were willing to permanently lose their data rather than pay ransom. This result coincides with the findings of a similar study by Bitdefender.
So, it's no wonder that so many people fall victim to ransomware infections. Most people barely know what it is, let alone how to prevent and how to stay away from such dangers.
