West Yorkshire Police Virus

What is West Yorkshire Police?

West Yorkshire Police screen lock is a scam created by Cyber criminals. This ransomware targets computer users who live in England, and to make this fake message appear more legitimate, Internet criminals exploit the name of the West Yorkshire Police.

If your computer is infected with this ransomware, you will be unable to access your desktop. The message reports that your computer has been used for illegal activities such as child pornography, etc., and the payment of a £100 fine is demanded to unlock your PC.

Do not pay anything for this screen lock, since it is a scam. No authorities use these methods to collect fines for illegal activities that may have been performed on users' computers.

Ransomware such as the West Yorkshire Police screen lock is often distributed via misleading websites and security vulnerabilities found on users' systems. The payment methods (Ukash and Paysafecard) are selected by cyber criminals to make it practically impossible to track them. 

Furthermore, this ransomware encrypts all files stored on your computer's hard drive. This makes this scam especially devious and complicated to remove.

In order to make the fake message appear authentic, ransomware creators exploit the names of local authorities. Moreover, this ransomware displays screenshots of users' recently viewed websites.

Although the West Yorkshire Police virus is targeted at PC users from England, the scam is translated to local languages worldwide so that international users will see this deceptive message. Such localization is possible by ransomware infections detecting the IP addresses of the computers they infiltrate.

If you see a message such as this on your computer, do not pay the fake fine and use the removal information provided to help unlock your PC and decrypt your files.

A fake message displayed by the West Yorkshire Police screen lock:

Association of Chief Police Officers. Your Computer is locked!
WARNING!
Please wait, your data is being verified!
If you enter the correct code and pay the fine, you will regain access to your computer.
If you enter a wrong code, this message will reappear.
If you enter a wrong code three times, your hard drive will be completely wiped, your computer will be damaged and unusable.

You IP-address will be stored in our database. (If you go with your IP address back to pornographic web pages) and your case will be transferred to special task force to further investigation! Estimated verification time is 4 hours... Your computer was used for illegal purposes. Your Windows licence number has been identified. You Windows licence number was involved in violation of the UK laws. Your IP address was used for the following illicit activities: visiting web pages of pornographic nature, including child pornography, sadomasochism, and child abuse.
As it has been determined that your computer contains videos of a pornographic nature, child pornography, and child abuse, it is being blocked to prevent further violation of the law. You will regain access to your computer after paying a fine of 100 pounds. There are two ways to pay the fine:
1. Pay Ukash:
Enter the purchased payment code in the payment field and press OK (in case of several codes, enter them as one line, one after the other, in the payment field and press OK).
2. Pay paysafecard:
Enter the purchased payment code in the payment field and press OK (in case of several codes, enter them as one line, one after the other, in the payment field and press OK).

Where can I buy a Ukash?
There are many ways to buy Ukash, for example.
1. Inpay - You can get a Ukash voucher in values from 10 - 500 pounds and pay using your Internet bank.
2. Epay - get Ukash from up to 6,000 stores nationwide displaying the epay sign.
3. Pay point - Get Ukash wherever you see the PayPoint sign.

West Yorkshire Police.

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Quick menu:

• What is West Yorkshire Police?
• STEP 1. "West Yorkshire Police" virus removal using safe mode with networking.
• STEP 2. "West Yorkshire Police" ransomware removal using safe mode with command prompt.

West Yorkshire Police screen lock removal:

Step 1

Start your computer in Safe Mode. Click Start, click Shut Down, click Restart, click OK.

During your computer starting process press the F8 key on your keyboard multiple times until you see the Windows Advanced Option menu, then select Safe Mode with Networking from the list.

Video demonstrating how to start Windows 7 in "Safe Mode with Networking":

Step 2

Log in to the account infected with the West Yorkshire Police scam. Start your Internet browser and download a legitimate anti-spyware program.

Update the anti-spyware software and start a full system scan. Remove all the entries detected.

Cannot boot in Safe Mode with Networking? (West Yorkshire Police virus blocks Safe Mode with Networking)

Other methods which can be used to eliminate this ransomware infection from your PC:

Remove West Yorkshire Police virus by creating a new user account.

West Yorkshire Police scam removal using System Restore.

Remove West Yorkshire Police ransomware using a Rescue Disk.

Notice that after using one of these methods to eliminate this ransomware from your computer, you need to run Kasperky Rannoh Decryptor tool to decrypt your files.

Alternative West Yorkshire Police scam removal guide:

If this ransomware blocks your screen when you start your computer in Safe Mode with Networking, try starting your PC in Safe Mode with Command Prompt.

1. During your computer starting process, press the F8 key on your keyboard multiple times until the Windows Advanced Options menu appears, and then select Safe Mode with Command Prompt from the list and press ENTER.

2. In the opened Command Prompt type explorer and press Enter. This command will open the Explorer window - do not close it and continue to the next step.

3. In the Command Prompt, type regedit and press Enter. This will open the Registry Editor window.

4. In the Registry Editor window, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\

5. In the right side of the window, locate "Shell" and right click on it. Click on Modify. The default value in the Data column is Explorer.exe - if you see something else displayed in this window, remove it and type Explorer.exe (take a note of whatever else was displayed in the Data column - this is the path of the rogue execution file).

Use this information to navigate to the rogue executable and remove it.

6. Restart your computer, download and install legitimate anti-spyware software, and perform a full system scan to eliminate any remnants of West Yorkshire Police scam.

If you cannot start your computer in Safe Mode with Networking (or with Command Prompt), boot your computer using a rescue disk. Some variants of ransomware disable Safe Mode, making its removal more complicated.

For this step, you need access to another computer. After removing West Yorkshire Police scam from your PC, restart your computer and scan it with legitimate antispyware software to remove any possible remnants of this security infection.

Step 3

This ransomware encrypts the files on your computer. To decrypt your files, download and run Kaspersky's Rannoh Decryptor.

After launching this software click the "Start Scan" button. Average scan time is approximately 2 hours.

After completing these steps, your computer should be clean. Reboot your computer in Normal Mode.

Other tools known to remove West Yorkshire Police screen lock:

• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

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