Hello everyone!

Computer viruses have passed a long way of development during their existence. If once viruses were written for entertainment, for demonstrating the knowledge of their author, now they increasingly serve purely practical malicious purposes: stealing passwords, sending out spam, creating botnets and so on. Such an infection can sit for years in your system and almost nothing to give out its presence, imperceptibly fulfilling its black business. Therefore, it is very important to know the main signs of infection, a short list of which you will find below in this article.

1. Your passwords have been changed

If you receive a letter stating that your password for a service has been changed, while you have not done anything like this, then this is an unambiguous sign of an attempt or successful hacking. The best way to protect is to activate two-level authorization in advance on the services where it is provided.

2. Changes in your browser.

You start the browser and see some new toolbars, or maybe a modified start page. This may be a consequence of installing a new application, now many even quite respectable developers indulge in such things. But it can be a sign of penetration into your system of malicious code.

3. Unusual behavior of the system

Any unusual events that you can not explain, should be the subject of your close attention. For example, if you see a new program icon in the system tray that you did not install or run. Or, if you start the system for a second, the black command window disappears immediately and disappears.

In this case, the first thing to check is the startup of the system. To do this, there are enough tools, including the popular CSleaner. You can also use the built-in msconfig system utility.

4. Redirecting to obscure sites

If every time you enter a search query you are not on the usual Google or Yandex, and on some strange pages with ads, if you are being followed by pop-ups everywhere, then this is a sign of infection with the DNSChanger virus. Although his epidemic has mostly receded, but still there are some modifications. It specifically pushes you the pages of its advertisers, and can also block updates to antivirus software.

5. New antivirus or system optimizer

Some sites (especially with a not very good reputation) shock you by announcing a virus infection of your system with a subsequent proposal to install your "most reliable antivirus." Approximately the same occurs the spread of various fake optimizers of the system and accelerators.

If you succumbed to persuasions and downloaded such a program, then consider that your system is already infected. A counterfeit antivirus can mimic the work and even report about neutralized malware, but in fact it is exactly that.

6. Unexpected appearance of new friends or messages

If you see a dramatic increase in the number of friends and tracked pages on social networks, most of which you absolutely do not know, then this is another sign of hacking. It is possible that your accounts have been hacked and will be used to send spam. No less suspicious attribute is the appearance in social networks of updates and messages to friends that you did not write.

7. Your account was logged in from another location or device

Some services, especially those related to sensitive information, have a system of notifications that your account has been entered from another country or from a new device. And in Gmail you have the opportunity to check this information directly from the main service window (link in the lower right corner). Never ignore such notices and immediately try to change the password in case of such unusual activity.

Conclusion

In the event that you find one, several or even all of the above, then most likely your computer has undergone a successful hacking attack. This is not a reason for panic, in most cases it is possible to fix everything.

Remove from your computer all programs that do not use or that are unfamiliar to you.
Install a well-known and well-proven antivirus. Many manufacturers produce special lightweight free versions that can be useful for quick treatment.
Change the network settings to use one of the third-party DNS services. For example, OpenDNS or Google DNS.
Change the passwords for all your accounts, first of all - to mail and social networks. Check the list of web applications that have access to your data on Twitter, Facebook, Google+.
Reset the state of your browser in the default.

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