He had heard of EaseUS Partition Master. It was the gold standard for moving data without losing a single file. But as he reached the checkout page, his eyes drifted to a different tab: a forum promising the "Latest Update Activated Free Download." Against his better judgment, he clicked.

The site was a mess of flashing banners and "Download Now" buttons that looked like traps. He bypassed three redirects and finally triggered a file download named EaseUS_Setup_Patch.zip . His antivirus immediately flagged it. "False positive," he whispered to himself, a common mantra for those seeking shortcuts. He disabled his firewall and ran the executable.

Suddenly, the screen went black. A single line of white text appeared: Encrypting File System.