A quick question for the knowledgeable. At the moment all of my laptops (one each for me, the wife and the kids) are considered 'disposable', IE the data on them is not critical. Any important stuff is transferred to a shared folder on a PC upstairs. I then move it to other locations that are only accessible as read only.

If either my wife or children manages to click on a ransomware link, how far down this list would it be able to get;

1. The infected laptop (pretty much guaranteed loss, but sufficient to wipe and reinstall).
2. The other uninfected laptops.
3. The writeable shared folder.
4. The rest of the PC upstairs.

I'm thinking that as long as I don't execute anything on the PC upstairs, the ransomware would have no means of actually getting and updating anything other than the folder it can see. That is assuming that having a folder as read only is actually enough of a defence?

I'm the only person who has any access to the PC, and it's that PC I need to ensure doesn't lose anything. Is there anything else I could put in place, assuming that anti virus and all that jazz has almost zero effect on ransomware?

[Edited on 8/4/16 by Slimy38]

Copy anything you must not loose to a removable device, USB disk for example, once its unplugged nothing can get at it to read / infect it.

If there are any network shares or you are backing up data it will potentially spread.

[Edited on 8/4/16 by jeffw]