I’m sure you remember the last time you were sick. Maybe your head was pounding, your nose completely stopped up, as you recall, you might have had the worst cough in history. Fortunately, we are pretty good at battling infections—even if we have to sleep practically non-stop for a couple of days.
More than likely, our bodies will fight off whatever wasn’t welcome and we’re confident we’d get back to the daily grind pretty soon.
While your body is healing itself, the symptoms of that illness might be indicative of a variety of health issues.
When your computer is infected, you probably will notice several symptoms indicative of a range of problems—some of which might get at being infected with something, but many symptomatic of a variety of problems not related to an infection.
While several symptoms on their own may not trigger any red flags as to an infection, there are several unexpected behaviors that should set off alarms. That is, if you are looking for them.
Below are 5 signs that your computer is infected with a virus:
Your browser isn’t behaving normally—you might remember these infections from the mid-2000’s. Incredibly irritating screen hogs, often associated with Internet Explorer, became symptoms of malware lurking on your computer. If you are getting popups when your browser isn’t even open, it might be a bad sign of an infection. Many of these popups will be for you to purchase fake antivirus to tell when your machine is infected.
In addition to popups, if your browser defaults have changed, say an unexpected toolbar that suddenly appears, something is amiss. If your default website or provider has suddenly changed or your results look funny, you can be fairly certain someone else may have installed something on your machine.
Your antivirus is disabled—if someone wanted break into your home undetected, the easiest way would to first deactivate your home security system. The same thing rings true for a computer virus. Many forms of malware are able to disable your antivirus software, leaving it free to roam your device undetected.
Note that there are several viruses that now act like normal functions on your computer, which may be unrecognized by antivirus right now. But there still are many strains of malware that continue to disable antivirus software as part of normal virus functionality.
Your computer is slow—there are many reasons for a slow computer—especially if its old and you’re running updated software platforms on it. To take a look what is going on, start by killing programs like browsers, which may be memory hogs.
If you find everything running as expected, but your machine is still slow, that’s a good indication of malware. You see, malware may be running a variety of applications and services in the background on your computer that are hard to detect. But more commonly than not, they end up slowing down your computer’s performance.
Your files are disappearing—I’m sure you are already aware of one of the most devastating malware out there today. Ransomware infections are known to encrypt your files and put them behind reach. The only way to recover may be to pay a ransom (that is, if you do not have a solid backup of your machine).
The best defense to a ransomware attack is to have everything backed up regularly and to recover from that backup (that is, unless you really trust follow instructions given to you by a criminal).
You no longer can connect to the internet—if you are suffering connectivity issues even if you typically have a good connection (and your internet provider says everything is working on their end) then you may be experiencing a symptom of an infection.
You may find it strange for a virus to block your internet connection, but many viruses block your connection to the internet simply to prevent you from downloading a tool to detect and remove the infection. The best way to address an infection like this is to download an antivirus tool (note: make sure you are visiting a trusted site) and transferring the tool to your machine via USB.
New programs appearing unexpectedly—if something shows up on your desktop that you don’t remember having installed or in your list of installed programs, there’s a chance these came from an infection.
Your antivirus will typically identify these programs as Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) and will alert you, but there are times when these programs may go undetected.
Your hard drive is working overtime—say you remember having a sizable amount of space free on your machine and turn around and you have less than 5 percent. You haven’t downloaded or installed any large software. The most likely explanation is malware downloading and storing files on your hard drive. Alarm bells should be ringing if something like this happens.
Your accounts are sending spam—if you’re getting friends letting you know that they’re receiving strange emails from you, be on high alert. Odd messages is a good indication you have a malware infection somewhere on your computer or device. Viruses were designed to spread, making mass email or messaging a great way to further infect contacts.
Viruses and other malware seem particularly unavoidable these days. Even while Windows platforms typically were the targets of choice, many cyber attackers are starting to target Macs and other devices. Best you can do is be prepared with some basic precautions:
Always run an antivirus—even on your smartphone.
Maintain regular backups—even to simply have some place to go back to if your computer needs a complete refresh.
Be wary of free—downloading apps from free software sites is a dangerous game today—make sure you choose reputable sites before clicking on the download button or link (one such site is ninite.com).
Patch your computer—just like at work, if you keep up with recommended updates and patches, you will be a whole lot better off.
Understand when you need to seek help—unless you’re well-trained in malware removal and forensics, you probably will want to seek some additional help when it comes to eliminating malware from a computer. If you are unsure, give us a call for some pointers.
This Cybersecurity Month, we want to make you aware of how you can be safe at home. Consider attending our upcoming webinar on keeping your kids safe to start off the series.
