Ransomware out of thin air

Twice in the past six months I've had my browser (Chrome) seized by ransomware. (The second time was ten minutes ago.) In both cases I was able to recover by shutting down immediately, waiting a few minutes, and restarting. But it makes me nervous.

I try to practice safe browsing: never click on unverified email links, avoid sites I suspect to be dodgy, etc. Again, both times it happened I was doing nothing unusual; this time, reading another writer's blog which I visit frequently.

Anybody else have this experience? Any ideas what I should do to avert the ransomware demons?

Recursive Ransomware

Yesterday the First Reader got an email saying, in essence, "Are you concerned by the worldwide ransomware attacks? Get the latest fixes from Microsoft! All you need to do is click on this one little link..."

There's a kind of chutzpah in phishing to infect computers with the program you're warning them about.

You know, I miss the Nigerian con letters. At least they were entertaining.