Held To Ransom

Yesterday I left my computer for a while to attend to my laundry and when I came back the entire screen was filled with a message purporting to be from the police. It informed me that I´d been caught visiting illegal websites and that access to my computer was being denied until I´d paid a fine of €100. Even if I hadn´t heard of this nasty malware I´d have realised immediately that it was a scam but it was still quite a shock to suddenly be denied access to my computer. I was totally perplexed about how to deal with it until it occurred to me to simply switch off the computer and immediately switch it on again. This prompted Windows to offer me the option of running it in safe mode in which I had access to all my programmes but no access to the Internet so I was able to run a malware scan. Sure enough, 3 items were detected and deleted and after I´d restarted Windows things were back to normal again. I´m no computer expert and there´s probably another way of dealing with this pest but it worked for me. If you don´t already have Malwarebytes I suggest you install it immediately. You can download a free version here: www.malwarebytes.org/