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A new series of three programs has started on Channel 5, Fridays at 7 pm. It is about how scammers work nowadays. I looked at my recording of the first one yesterday evening. Scary. It is not just about computers, but includes other items such as scam phone calls and scam mail. However there was one section about a fairly new method called ransom scam. The scenario goes like this. You go to log on to your computer as normal but just see a message on the screen telling you that your computer has been hacked and all your files have been encrypted. The hackers will kindly decrypt them for a fee, which often is requested in bit coins. One catch, there is a deadline for payment. Miss that and the fee goes up. If you use your computer for your business you have a problem. This is proving to be very profitable for the scammers, and has become very sophisticated recently. Even if you have backups, they often turn out to be encrypted too. So this raised a couple of questions in my mind. As Linux users are we less likely to have this problem? When I install a new version of Linux, (I use Xubuntu 14.04 LTS at the moment, but a new LTS version is due out next April), I notice an option to 'encrypt the whole disk'. I have always ignored this, but would it be a good idea to go along with it? Any thoughts on this? Neil -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq