How Do You Know if Your PC is Infected with Malware?
Malware is made up of harmful programs that steal your data, cause your hard drive’s performance to slow, and possibly lead to identity theft. But what makes malware such a danger is that it has the ability to make itself invisible, so you do not necessarily know that your personal information is being stolen and cannot search your hard drive in order to locate any unwanted programs.
So in order to find out if you are infected with malware, you need to pay attention to signs (some obvious, some subtle) that, if noticed, imply that you very likely have some form of malware installed that needs to be removed.
The first sign that you likely have malware installed is when popup ads appear to occur for no particular reason. Generic pop up ads that are not due to malware show up on very few websites these days and only those with specific HTML coding. If a pop up ad occurs on a website that does not normally have them, or if one pops up when you are not even using the computer, there is a high probability to have malware.
Another way to check to see if you have malware is if your Internet homepage changes without your consent, especially if you are unable to change it back. This is a sign that spyware and adware have taken hold of your computer and you need to remove them.
If your computer experience significant slowing – much slower than it used to be even when few programs are running – this can be a sign that you have malware. Malware is a type of program, so when it is running it uses up your resources and causes your computer’s performance to suffer.
Most malware has the ability to mask itself, or uses a program name that makes it resemble other, more useful programs. But if you see a program – especially in the list of running processes – that you did not install, there is a good chance that program is some type of spyware that is attempting to steal your data.
Finally, you can find out if you have malware using a program that is designed to target the specific processes in order to find out where all of the spyware and adware is hiding. These programs have extremely large malware libraries that can recognize when the programs are running. It is advised that you use these programs not only when you notice the signs of malware using some of the tips above, but also ever few months to ensure that no malware has been installed that has not yet made its impact.
When you have malware, you need to make sure you remove it safely, before it has a chance to steal any of your personal information and before you are inundated with so many ads that you end up punching a hole through your computer. Only by performing a malware check and paying attention to signs that your computer might be infected can you stop malware from affecting your life.
