Malware, or malicious programs, can infect your computer without your knowledge and cause damage to your files and security. This means that it’s quite important that you recognize various signs that your computer is infected quickly. That way you can deal with the threat before any more damage is done.
-Slow Computer
There are obviously many different reasons why your computer might slow down, but if it is slowing down and you feel you’ve eliminated some of the other possible reasons, malware programs running in the background could be a cause. This is because these programs tend to be running in your computer’s background all the time, eating up memory and slowing down your computer.
Malware programs may not even show up when you check your task manager for what programs are currently running since some malware programs actually hide from that tool. So if your computer appears to be running slow for no reason, malware could certainly be the cause.
-Popups
Another possible sign that you might have malware installed on your computer popup ads. This is especially likely to be true if you’re getting unwanted popup advertisements on your computer, even if you aren’t currently browsing on the Internet. That is a sure sign that a program is installed on your computer that is generating those popups, especially if you aren’t even browsing at the time.
-Home Page
Another sure sign that you probably have malware on your computer is if the home page on your browser is constantly changing without you tell it to do so. This often happens due to malware programs that change your home page to a page that may be dangerous. It’s important to take care of this problem quickly because it tends to feed on itself. If a malware changes your home page default and you then start your browser, it will immediately go to that dangerous website and possibly download even more malware.
This malware can then do additional bad things to your computer, including stealing your information.
-Sending Emails in Your Name
Another common sign that you have malware is if you discover that emails are being sent in your name and without your permission or knowledge to people on your email contact list. These emails will often have spam in them. They are solicitations and part of a scheme for the person infecting your computer to make money.
It can be pretty terribly annoying to be accidentally spamming all of your friends with advertisements about random products. The tendency is to think when this happens that something is wrong with your email. But in fact, the likelihood is that your computer is infected with a malware program that is making this happen.
-Scanning Programs and Finding Out for Sure
If you think you might have malware on your computer, or really, even if you don’t, a scanning program is a good idea. Examples of programs you can download and scan completely for free include Spybot, Malwarebytes, and Avira. It’s a good idea to do periodical scans of your computer all the time anyway to find out whether you have malware or not for sure.
