How to detect if you have spyware - symptoms and causes
Spyware and adware are a malicious programs that may have a number of undesirable effects on your computer. Symptoms include changing search results when you do a search on Google, or changing your homepage. Other forms of spyware and adware will even change the configuration of your PC.
The main problem of spyware and adware is that they are very difficult to remove. Often, it will be impossible to manually remove spyware, and you'll need an anti-spyware program to remove it. Here are a few symptoms of a spyware infected machine:
Slowing Your Computer Down
A major annoyance of having spyware and adware on your machine is that they will significantly slow your computer down. Most of all, it can hurt you by being annoying. Pop up ads may happen when your surf the internet, as a result of having adware installed on your machine.
Often, your computer will begin to get slower and slower the longer you have adware on your machine. Moreover, if you don't realize that you have spyware when you first get it, you'll usually end up getting more spyware and this makes it even more difficult to remove.
Why does spyware make your computer slower? Well, your computer is basically made to do more, thus slowing it does. Not only does it need to perform the tasks that you want it to do, but (with spyware installed) it now needs to do a number of other things such as monitoring your surfing behavior or displaying annoying pop-up ads.
Things such as tracking what you're doing, recording information, displaying advertisements and running malicious programs all take up your computers processing power. Thus, your computer will run slower.
In rare cases, spyware can even cause your computer to completely crash.
Relaying Information
Some types of spyware go beyond just displaying advertisements. There are a number of worse types that are also common. Like adware, spyware can track what you're doing and where you're going on the internet.
In some cases, spyware can record the websites you have visited and the keystrokes you have entered. It may take this information and report it back to the company who makes the spyware.
Once your personal information is relayed back to the company or individual running the spyware, your personal information, such as your credit card information, your addresses, paypal account and other sensitive information will be in the hands of the spyware owner. They will then have your username and password for all accounts you have logged into online.
If you have heard about identity theft before, this is where it comes from - malicious spyware programs who record what you do and where you go. Unfortunately, this is alarmingly common and many people do not recognize how serious the problem actually is.
by Dave Edwards
Keyword : detect if you have spyware
