Signs of Malware
How Do I Know If I’ve Been Infected with Virus/Malware?
8 Signs
- Sudden crashes with no apparent reason. Often accompanied by a blue screen with white letters, often referred to as the Blue Screen of Death.
- System Running Slowly. It could be many applications running at once. Try shutting some down. Some applications legitimately make heavy use of computer resources, but has the application you are currently using done this before? It could be that a memory upgrade would fix the problem, but if nothing on your system has changed, it could well be a virus/malware.
- Hard Drive activity. All PCs and laptops have tiny LEDs that blink to show activity. The LED for the hard drive blinks rapidly when the system is reading from or writing to the hard drive. If this happens for no apparent reason, it could signal an infection.
- Popup Windows. A classic sign of infection is odd windows popping up, during bootup or while running, warning you of “problems” and giving you an 800 number to call to solve them. Don’t take these at face value! They are a scam. Let us remove them for you.
- Suspicious Program Activity. They may become corrupted, disappear, open by themselves. Your anti-virus software may warn you that a program is trying to access the Internet of its own volition. Take these seriously.
- Unexplained network activity. Your router has LEDs, like your PC or laptop. If it is blinking when you are not initiating any network activity or Internet use, it could be malware.
- Mysterious Emails. If your contacts report that they are getting emails from you that you didn’t send, it undoubtedly indicates that your computer has been infected or your email password has been hacked.
- Antivirus Disabled. Viruses/malware often disable the antivirus software on your computer.