Malware…What is it? How do I know I have malware? How does it get there? And How do I remove it?
Malware is is a type of software that gets installed onto your computer that is intended to do harm, by disabling or damaging system files.
You may notice your computer running a little sluggish, or you may notice unwanted pop-ups frequently. Sometimes you can be redirected to other websites that you did not originally go to. There’s a lot of different ways malware can affect your system. It’s a great idea to run a malware scan on your computer frequently so that you can assure you are not infected. I would suggest running a malware scan at least once a week or more if you feel you may have some signs of a malware infection.
Malware typically gets installed through many different exploits in other computer related software that you may install, or through other applications that are exploited frequently such as Java or Adobe Flash. You can also get malware by opening up harmful executable files(these are files that have a .exe extension on them and should not typically be run unless it’s through a trusted vendor) Be careful on files that you may receive from your email as well.
Now how do you remove Malware? If you have just a standard malware infection this can more than likely be taken care of by a nifty program called MalwareBytes. This is a free software that you can download and run on your computer that will scan your entire system for any traces of Malware and with any luck it will remove it. They also offer a paid version of this program that offers more scanning options that may keep you a little safer but the free version works just as well. Provided you have a standard malware infection MalwareBytes will remove the harmful files from your computer and you should be ok. If your computer is still not running properly you may have a full blown virus infection on your computer and you may need to exhaust other resources to combat that infection. We will right another blog post soon that will offer some great free options for virus removal.