Obvious Scam but..

[aardvark]

You can check to see if your email has been in any data breaches in the last couple of years.

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Most excellent website, you can sign up and it'll automatically email you if your email (or even domain if you have one) is ever in any future data breach.

It's run by Troy Hunt a security professional and Microsoft MVP for several years... so you don't need to worry about it being a dodge site too

Read a few of Troy's blog posts to see how easy it really is for someone (any one) to get hold of your details if you're ever unlucky enough to be signed up to a hacked site.

interesting - 1 result for me - nexus mods although i didn't even know i signed up for it, must have been a long time ago.

 

[Rich1988]

Same for me on nexus mods, I must have signed up many moons ago as I don't even remember doing so, which means thankfully it was an old password I only use for accounts that dont hold any important stuff

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

I investigate these on a regular basis, and provide Forensic support.

Ransomware will inject itself into Explorer.exe and disable System Restore, delete all Shadow Volume Copies, and use bcdedit to turn off Windows Start-up Repair. It will then inject itself into svchost.exe and encrypt the data on all local drives, removable drives, and mapped network drives

Unfortunately, most users do not realize Ransomware is on their computer until it displays the ransom note and your files have already been encrypted. Some of the files where associated malware have been found are:

%Temp%
C:\<random>\<random>.exe
%AppData%
%LocalAppData%
%ProgramData%

Thanks for the overview. Didn't realise how crafty these things are.

 

[Phantom Shadow]

Haven't heard of that haveibeenpwned.com website before, confirmed that I have been too lazy. Been pwned from multiple places including Adobe and I still have some passwords in use that have been in use for a long time.

Thankfully it'll just be forums etc, banking/email/steam are all on 2FA and/or unique passwords.