I'm a student and I frequently use my USB drive to transfer files between computers at my university. Unfortunately, there have been a couple of instances where the school computers were infected with viruses, and subsequently, my USB carried those viruses back to my personal computer. The incidents involved something called the shortcut virus, and both times, I had to reinstall Windows to get rid of the issue. To prevent this from happening again, I have turned off autoplay and make sure to scan the USB drive thoroughly when I plug it in at home. I'm looking for effective strategies to keep my USB safe, especially since it's crucial for accessing my files.
1 Answer
It's a real shame your university isn't preventing this. You should definitely reach out to your IT department about the issue. They might not fully realize how big of a problem this is if it's not reported. Also, a lot of places disable USB ports entirely for security reasons, which might be something they should consider doing.
Seriously! I remember at my old campus, they didn’t even let us plug in USBs for that very reason.