You see them at Office Depot, desperately looking at anti-virus programs, reading the box to see if the program can recover eight years of lost or destroyed case files, research, pleadings, billings, contact information and office records. They are so white with fear that they look like walking calcium deposits. I have seen lawyers in this situation who have lost EVERYTHING because of an Internet attack. Their life’s work is on this computer.Ĭonsistent with being computer illiterate, these lawyers don’t back up their files, they don’t have firewall or anti-virus programs installed (or the programs are not updated or have expired) and nightmare of nightmares, they are using their “main machines” to access the Internet. For example, a lawyer might be using a computer that was purchased in 2002 as their main machine. The problem is that many plaintiff’s lawyers are not computer savvy. The lawyer’s computer has case files, pleadings, research and documents that the attorney has accumulated over the years. These miscreants made $30 from each victim and luckily, did not want to steal confidential information such as passwords or account numbers.Īs with this lawyer friend, the typical lawyer’s office has a personal computer next to his or her deck that the lawyer uses to ply his trade. She was lucky that the con artists’ goal was to force people to spend $30 to get their computers working again. The end result is that I had to spend six hours that Sunday evening restoring her computer. She called me because the Trojan had disabled her computer to the point where it was unusable. Well, the miscreants had maliciously programmed the virus to install if one pressed the X. She did not press the “click here” icon and instead pressed the red “X” that we all know is the universal method for closing a window, box or message. (It was the notorious “Anti-Virus XP” virus/message going around.) The pop-up ominously said that her computer was infected with a virus and to “click here” to purchase and download the anti-virus program to get rid of the detected virus. She told me that while working online with her notebook computer she was tricked by one of those pop-up ads that looked like a message from Microsoft. I knew the call was serious because her voice had a distressed tone. As long as it remains disconnected from the Net, it can never be attacked and your pleadings, research and case files will remain intact and safe from intruders.Ī few Sundays ago I received a call from a county prosecutor acquaintance of mine. Assuming that you have a separate desktop computer, that computer will NEVER be connected to the Internet. If you do exactly as I say, your office files will never be compromised, damaged, destroyed or stolen by Net miscreants.īottom line first, what I propose you do is set up a notebook computer in your office on your desk, connect it to the Net and use this computer as a “Net-only” machine. Two events recently occurred that were “on point” with this month’s topic: protecting your office files from being compromised, damaged or destroyed by online attacks from hackers, crackers, thieves or the deranged.
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