There are some times in our lives when we encounter malware. No matter how careful we are, creators of malware get a chance some or the other time to enter our computer and their creations start showing their malicious properties, like a simple task taking too long to finish or your big report having a lot of messed up characters. However, when you see such symptoms, it’s not always necessary that your computer is infected. Then, how to identify that it is? Here are some signs.
1. An Attack of Popup Windows
A shower of popup windows can be an indication that malicious software has been installed on your PC. Popups are usually a sign of a Trojan clicker or adware. The intention of adware is basically to improve rankings of sites by way of advertising. When you click on those ads (popups) you increase their revenue and rankings on search engines.
One-two popup windows may be undamaging but when they occur every now and then you should be wary. Clicking them is never a good idea because by doing so, you may invite more malware samples.
Therefore, the next time you see an ad for 97% off on designer handbags or a clearance sale on Amazon cooking appliances, be careful and think if it’s too good to be true. By inviting an infection, you may have to pay a lot more than the ad is promising you of saving.
2. Mysterious Withdrawals at Your Online Bank Account
A dangerous practice of internet banking fraud is that the malware installs itself in your PC and finds the times when you access your online banking account. Then it copies your login info and sends it out to the malicious person and the person can easily make withdrawals, transfer money to her/his account or make purchases.
You can confirm if your laptop is infected by looking for any additional fields you might not usually see on the login page of your bank. These fields may ask you for some unusual information such as your ATM PIN or more letters of your password. For example, if normally your bank asks for 4 letters of your password and now it’s asking 6 or 8, it’s a clear sign that a Trojan is active in your PC trying to steal your sensitive information.
3. Settings Changed without Your Involvement
Though you don’t look at your settings every day, you can find on a day if they are looking different than you had set them. This may surprise you of what’s happening that your screen is looking quite weird. Your homepage is changed or you see icons pointing to various applications! Such things indicate that your PC is infected.
4. Slow Speed
If you find that your computer is taking a lot of time for things it used to do instantly, chances are it is sick. Offenders carefully program some pieces of code to remain undetected and their main intention is to steal a part of your computing power to activate malicious operations like generating spam, spreading viruses and embedding spyware on other computers.
However, the slowed down speed may also be due to some software you install consumes loads of CPU cycles. But you will have to confirm it through a virus scan.
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