The sheer amount of people who use the internet makes it a great place for malevolent opportunists, who can tamper with your technology, privacy, and income if you are not careful. Since I have not met anyone who enjoys having their privacy intruded on, technology broken, or income stolen, I am going to give you a few signs you can look for if you think your computer has been infected with malware, and at the end of the article, I’ll tell you how to combat malware.
Toolbars? I’ll Take Twelve!
The title of this point makes it seem like a very broad field, but this is actually one of the easier ways to tell if your computer has malware. If you are to ever open your internet browser, and the homepage is something other than what you know it should be, congratulations! You probably have malware! If you ever go to download anything from a website, or just see a link or pop-up window on a website that looks out of place, think before clicking it. Otherwise, you might reopen your search engine to find an additional toolbar and a new homepage. An example of this would be finding MSN as your homepage, and a shiny new AOL toolbar occupying your search engine the next time you open your browser.
The category of unwanted add-ons is not limited to toolbars and search engine homepages alone however; you can also receive malware in the form of pop-up windows. If you have downloaded something recently and you notice that pop-up windows are fighting for domination of your screen as soon as you open a program, there is a great chance that you downloaded malware. Pop-up windows are not only extremely annoying, they are also extremely dangerous. Pop-ups normally do not install alone onto your system, and often times will decide to bring other threats to the party that you will not notice because you are busy dealing with the pop-ups.
Continuous Crashing
If you have malware running rampant on your computer, a good way of finding out is through frequent crashes. Crashing in this scenario includes program crashes or even system crashes, which might look something like this:
However; if you are getting blue screen crashes, they might also be the result of several technical issues, but I have actually installed malware before which has made my computer crash to the blue screen, so it shouldn’t be too uncommon of a malicious program to get.
Strange Malfunctions & Channelling the Spirit of the Tortoise
Although random messages from your operating system may come from haywire technology, it is more likely the activities of a rogue program, also referred to as malware. If you notice that programs are opening and closing without any user input, your computer may be infected with malware. If it is actually malware which is causing this, you may even lose access to some of your computer’s features or programs. If programs fail to open or no longer respond correctly, you may have malware.
Another similar sign that can indicate that you might have malware is if your computer starts showing you that its spirit animal is the humble tortoise. Sure, slow and steady might win the race, but no one has time for that when your computer takes three minutes to power up or load your search engine. If your computer slows down to the point that you are frustrated, you either have malware, faulty technology, or Windows 98.
