You can’t protect yourself from ransomware: you have to make yourself invisible.

Don’t fool yourself thinking it will never happen to you: cybercrime is an industry, and a very profitable one. Last year alone, almost 2500 acts of ransomware hacking have racked up over 24 million dollars in untraceable loot, with as much as 57 million dollars in damages to companies recovering from loss of data, loss of business, legal fees and massive public relations headaches.

What is ransomware, you ask? This is a legitimate question, and now it’s as good a time as any to get an education into one of the most ruthless, and damaging experience a computer user will ever go through.

It could start with opening an email attachment, or by accepting a file transfer on any number of social networks, or even by downloading a piece of perfectly harmless-looking shareware from any number of websites. Finally, it happens: a notification pops up on screen, as a chilling sensation travels down your spine like a shot of electricity.

All your files have been locked away with military-grade encryption, and the only people who can help you, will do so in exchange for cold hard cash transferred to them via an untraceable virtual currency.

Try as you must to access your files, every bit of data in your computer has now turned into garbled nonsense, including data stored in any connected external drives, like flash drives and, according to the latest news, even external drives within the same WiFi network, whether or not they are physically connected to the computer where the incriminated file was originally open.

Multiply the above scenario by 2500 times, and it will give you a sense of how terribly efficient ransomware is, according to 2015 statistics.

What can you do to prevent ransomware from wreaking havoc in your life?

First of all, common sense.

If you have sensitive data, and you have a problem parting with it, mirror it on a cloud server, preferably Google Drive, DropBox or OneDrive, as these provide you with automatic backup features that mirror everything you have within a designated folder.

Use your PC as you would a smartphone.

Why is hacking so rare on smartphones than it is on PCs? If your answer is “Android is based on Linux”, you got it all wrong, aside from the fact that Linux is not immune to ransomware, but rather less targeted.

Smartphone users do one thing that PC users don’t, which makes smartphones far more secure: they don’t rely on desktop apps.

The great thing about Windows 10, Mac OS X, and Chrome OS is that they support store apps that are approved by each respective store. Games follow the same trend, with established cloud networks like Steam, Origin, and Xbox, delivering entertainment to gamers via secure channels, monitored by each respective distribution company.

All sorts of utilities are now available through a secure and searchable store.

Major software companies, including Microsoft, Adobe, and Autodesk, deliver their software electronically, through their own secure servers, minimizing the chance of accidental delivery of infected files to consumers.

Needless to say, avoiding shady P2P sites and apps like eMule is also a good habit to get into, considering that P2P networks known for sharing illegal software are typical hunting grounds for ransomware.

Trust no one

Ransomware is the executioner, but it has friends, in the form of data-mining worms and trojans that lurk through computer networks to find out who you are, and who knows you. Suddenly, a whole bunch of spam starts cluttering your email filters, sent from people named suspiciously after somebody you know, whose name was most likely gathered from your address book.

Rule of thumb is: if grandma barely knows how to use her iPad, she’s probably not the one sending you a *.zip file titled “Vacation pics”.

Finally: be ready to power wash

The great thing about the latest versions of desktop operating systems like Windows 10 and Mac OS X, is the ability to roll-back to a previous version. With that said, the latest version of ransomware will also devastate the first sector of your system’s hard drive. By this token, a reinstallation is in order, which means, reinstalling apps and reloading backups can’t just be a last-minute thing, it must be planned:

• Make inventory of any apps that you won’t be able to restore automatically, and store setup files in a separate backup or a cloud drive.
• Have a flash drive ready with an installation medium for your version of Windows 10
• Make recurrent backups to a separate drive, possibly an SSD, and leave it disconnected until the next backup session. Think of it as your “Computer disaster preparedness kit”.

As simple a plan as this three-step process is, it’s better than no plan, and certainly better than losing all your data.