Odds are good you’ve heard or read something about “infected computers” recently. Maybe you received one of those scary emails that go around about a particularly nasty computer virus that will cause you to “lose all of your information”.
Are Viruses Real?
Many of the stories that go around about viruses and infected computers are scary. Many of those are also fake.
The reality is that while computer infections aren’t as dramatic as the press and some emails make them sound, they are a very real problem. The New York Times did some stories about how infected computers led to bank theft:
- A county in Kentucky had $415,000 stolen via an infected computer.
- A sign design company in California had nearly $100,000 stolen.
Not all viruses lead to theft. Most viruses, in fact, don’t lead to theft. They can make it difficult to get work done with your computer by:
- Preventing you from getting to specific websites
- Making your machine run slower
- Causing software to fail or causing your computer to reboot
- Displaying pop-ups, some of which are inappropriate for work
Some viruses will disable computer updates and anti-virus software to make it tougher to eliminate the virus.
So, How Do I Know If My Computer is Infected?
Determining if your computer is infected can be tricky since many of the symptoms from viruses can have other causes. There are a few signs that pretty much mean your computer is infected:
- Pop-ups display when you aren’t surfing the web.
- You cannot get to specific web sites. For example, you navigate to www.google.com but your browser takes you a different search engine.
One other sign that is pretty reliable is that you can’t start a scan with your anti-virus tool. Either the tool won’t start or the scan won’t start. However, this isn’t a sure sign of a virus as this can be caused by a problem with the anti-virus tool itself.
My Computer Might Have a Virus. What Do I Do?
If you believe your computer has a virus, you should stop using it until you can get the virus removed. It is especially important that you not go to any web sites that have financial information about you like bank web sites, on-line shopping sites, credit card sites, etc.
If you think your information might be comprised, call your bank immediately. You can go over your recent activity plus they can help you update your account information so that, if it was stolen, it is no good. You should contact credit card providers as well. If you think they might have gotten id’s and passwords to any on-line stores, you should, using a different computer, log onto those stores and change your password.
Next, you need to get the virus removed from your computer. I’d recommend having this done by a computer support professional.
If you want to remove the virus yourself, you should try:
- Update your anti-virus software if it is out of date.
- Run a full scan with your anti-virus software telling it to clean any infection it finds.
If you can’t run a full scan or if your anti-virus software can’t clean the virus, reinstalling Windows, from scratch, is the next step. This will mean reinstalling all of your programs and could mean losing some or all of your data. But, in some cases, this is the only sure way to eliminate the virus.
The most important thing is that if you suspect your computer might have a virus, you shouldn’t use it for anything important until you can get it checked out. The potential for loss is just too great to take chances like that.
If you need help checking or cleaning your computer, don’t hesitate to email us at svlach@isvinc.com or give us a call at 630.765-5601; we’d be happy to help.