How to make sure no one is spying on your computer

The most dan­ger­ous mal­ware is not the one that cor­rupts or encrypts your files, but the one that silent­ly watch­es you. Spy­ware can record a sig­nal from a web­cam, col­lect­ing dirt on the user, can steal pass­words and leak con­fi­den­tial cor­re­spon­dence. Need­less to say, the con­se­quences of such sur­veil­lance can be even more dan­ger­ous than the loss of all files on the com­put­er.

Here’s how you can keep your­self safe and make sure no one is spy­ing on your com­put­er.

Soft­ware pro­tec­tion

First of all, you need to install good pro­tec­tion on your com­put­er. Most antivirus­es for Win­dows and macOS can pro­tect your sys­tem from key­log­gers (virus­es that keep track of which but­tons on your key­board you press), web­cam hijack­ers, and oth­er types of spy­ware.

Of course, there is no antivirus in the world that can pro­tect a PC from all threats at once. But, as prac­tice shows, free solu­tions are enough to pro­tect your home com­put­er. The main thing is to ensure that the antivirus is updat­ed on time.

In Feb­ru­ary we talked about top five free antivirus­es begin­ning of this year. The list is up to date.

But antivirus is just the first line of defense. It will be use­ful to build anoth­er one. We are talk­ing about spe­cial­ized scan­ners that mon­i­tor spy activ­i­ty. Such scan­ners do not con­flict with the main antivirus prod­uct in any way, but some­times they can find some­thing that the antivirus has over­looked. If you are a Win­dows user, a free scan­ner might be a good option. Spy­bot Search & Destroy.

If you still sus­pect that your com­put­er is infect­ed with spy­ware, but the antivirus does not find any­thing, con­sid­er options Nor­ton Pow­er Eras­er or House­Call by Trend­Mi­cro. These free scan­ners also do not con­flict with the main­stream antivirus as they work direct­ly from the brows­er.

Avoid­ance of infec­tion

Even the most reli­able antivirus­es will not save the user who him­self drags the infec­tion onto his com­put­er. If you want to stay safe, you should mon­i­tor your sys­tem your­self and avoid pos­si­ble sources of infec­tion.

For exam­ple, very often virus­es pen­e­trate home PCs due to the care­less actions of rel­a­tives. If more than one fam­i­ly mem­ber uses your com­put­er, you should cre­ate a sep­a­rate account with a pass­word for each of them. It’s not a mat­ter of pri­va­cy or trust, it’s a mat­ter of gen­er­al secu­ri­ty. It is also advis­able to dis­able admin­is­tra­tor rights for fam­i­ly mem­bers who are not well versed in the sys­tem.

You also need to be care­ful your­self. One of the most com­mon ways to infect a com­put­er is through phish­ing emails or fake pop-up noti­fi­ca­tions. The advice here is uni­ver­sal — don’t open sus­pi­cious attach­ments and don’t click on any­thing you don’t trust.

“Infor­mal” signs of infec­tion

You need to lis­ten to your com­put­er. Some­times lit­er­al­ly.

Once, by neg­li­gence, I brought a min­er virus onto my com­put­er. Such virus­es use the sys­tem resources of the vic­tim com­put­er to mine cryp­tocur­ren­cy for their cre­ator. At that time, the antivirus did not work, but I was able to detect the infec­tion very quick­ly. When the min­er start­ed to load the video card, it began to heat up more and, accord­ing­ly, the cool­ers made more noise. I noticed an atyp­i­cal hum of fans, looked into the list of sys­tem process­es, saw a min­er process there and delet­ed it man­u­al­ly. But this was pos­si­ble only because I knew exact­ly how my PC cool­ers rus­tle dur­ing nor­mal oper­a­tion.

Pro­tec­tive pro­grams are, of course, good. But if you real­ly want to feel safe, get to know your com­put­er bet­ter and learn to pay atten­tion to such “infor­mal” signs of infec­tion.

For exam­ple, one of the obvi­ous signs of infec­tion is the slow­down of the oper­at­ing sys­tem. Of course, any sys­tem after some time after instal­la­tion starts to work more slow­ly. But if the slow­down occurred abrupt­ly, it is worth look­ing for the cause.

Pay atten­tion to any sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty. Watch the hard dri­ve activ­i­ty indi­ca­tor (red light on the sys­tem unit). If the com­put­er is not per­form­ing any tasks, it should not light up or blink.

If a black com­mand prompt win­dow flash­es on the desk­top imme­di­ate­ly after the sys­tem boots, this is a clear sign of a process that is try­ing to go unno­ticed.

Pay atten­tion to changes you did­n’t make. If your brows­er sud­den­ly starts chang­ing your home­page, you have prob­a­bly picked up an adware tro­jan.

As a rule, spy­ware virus­es have a weak spot. Since they have to keep an eye on the user all the time, they hang in the list of sys­tem process­es all the time. So, they can be found in the “Process­es” tab of the task man­ag­er. If you encounter any sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty, take a look at this tab and look for the process that is con­sum­ing CPU resources. Then just google its name. If it is indeed mal­ware, in most cas­es you will find a descrip­tion of how to destroy it.