It starts out with the small suspicion that something is wrong. You
notice your laptop takes much longer than usual to complete a simple
task. Or you open that file for your big report only to find it a mess
of garbled characters and unreadable text. For a brief moment, you
consider the possibility that you’ve gone crazy. Then you actually pray
this is true, because you’d much rather accept that explanation over the
more likely alternative: Your computer is infected.
But hold on. Before you embark on that disk defragmentation spree,
know that there may be hope for you yet. One of the trickiest problems
in PC
troubleshooting is figuring out whether a machine is sick or if it is
simply old and needs upgrading — especially because malware creators do
their best to conceal their nefarious activities. This allows them to
stealthily gobble up your computing power to run their self-serving
processes.
1. Pop-up windows attack.
Pop-up windows — especially those that occur frequently and unexpectedly — can be indicative of malicious software installed on your computer.
“Pop-ups are certainly a sign that you may be infected,”. This is normally a sign of adware or a trojan clicker.” as malware authors get money for each click and
pop-up served.
“Basically, adware tries to increase rankings of websites through
advertising,” “By clicking on those [pop-ups] you’ll
increase the revenue for displays, companies, and increase the rankings
on Google searches.”
One or two pop-ups might be harmless, but be wary when they start to
occur more and more frequently. Clicking on them is never a good idea.
“Some of them can lead you to different malware samples,”. They’ll convince you a certain product or service exists to
hook you, but it could just be more bad software installing itself on
your PC.”
So the next time you come across that ad for designer handbags at 97
percent off or a closing sale at the Amazon electronics department,
think twice about whether this would be a likely promotion, or if it
just seems too good to be true. With a badly infected PC, you’ll end up
paying a lot more in time than whatever savings that ad promised.
2. Your online bank account has mysterious withdrawals.
It’s
a scheme known as Internet banking fraud, where malware can embed
itself in your computer and detect when you access online banking sites.
The software can record your username and password and transmit it to
the offending party, after which the information is used to make
withdrawals, move money to another account or make purchases.
“To confirm if you are infected, look at the time of login for any
evidence of additional fields that you would not normally see at the
bank login page,”. These may be asking for additional
pieces of information such as an ATM PIN number, or asking for more
letters of your password.” Say, for instance, that the bank normally
asks for three letters of your password and now it’s asking for six.
This may be a clear sign that you have a banking trojan on your machine,
which does form injections to try and steal your credentials.
There are two ways offenders can gain access
to your bank account, One of them is by installing
malware in your computer, which contains keylogging components.” These
programs will record every key you press, letting offenders have access
to your credentials. And then they can further use your account to make
withdrawals, for money laundering, or to take money from your account
and transfer it to theirs.
You can also fall victim to phishing scams. In other words, you might
find yourself on a fake page that tries to pose as your bank account.
“They try to look exactly like your bank, with an area for a login as
well,” But logging in actually brings you to a different
website — and you gave them your credentials.”
Public computers, such as the ones in Internet cafés and airports,
are especially susceptible to this type of threat; never use them to
access sensitive information such as your online bank account.
3. Some of your settings have changed without your intervention.
You work regularly on the same PC, and though you don’t glance at
your settings every day, you’re pretty confident you remember how you’ve
set them up. So you’re taken aback when your desktop suddenly looks a
lot different than it did the day before. What’s going on?
Your computer may be infected, “Different user settings
that change without the user’s intervention, like your homepage, icons
that point to different applications — things like that can indicate
your PC is sick.”
If something looks wrong, chances are it is.
4. Your laptop slows down.
If
your computer gets bogged down doing menial tasks that it used to do
effortlessly, it may be infected with malware. Some pieces of code are
carefully programmed to go undetected, and their main objective is to
steal part of your computing muscle to power malicious activities
online, such as spreading viruses, generating spam and installing
spyware on other computers. It’s a big sign you may have a virus, though
detecting whether the source is malicious can be tricky.
This could be an indication of an infection;
however, this could also be due to some software you have installed that
might be consuming a lot of CPU cycles. It really is a
mixture of various factors which will all come together to indicate an
infection.”
So what should you look out for? “Some signs to watch out for are
when websites are loading slower, or opening applications takes longer
than usual,” is what we at Computer Doctor suggest. However, only a positive virus scan result
can confirm that you actually have a virus rather than a legit program
that is slowing down your computer.
5. You’re randomly connected to various websites.
When your PC is infected with a virus, it’s possible that the malware
will force-connect you to websites in the background and send
information back and forth with these sources. So how does malicious
code wreak havoc on your PC in the first place?
“You can get infected by using pirated software, downloading or
opening attachments in your spam folder, or even just by visiting
different websites,” Malware writers
exploit the vulnerability in a web browser and then manage to inject a
little piece of code called a downloader. The downloader will then start
connecting to different servers or different websites.
Bottom Line
When it comes to malware on your PC, it’s best not to take any
chances. Take advantage of your antivirus software and scan your system
regularly to see if you’re infected. A good rated antivirus package that protects against both malware and virus infections will give you advanced notice of an intrusion,
hopefully before you see one or more of these warning signs. They’ll
also help you remove the malicious files. That said, you must remain
vigilant by keeping your antivirus software up-to-date and watching for
the above warning signs.
