You don’t need to do much in order to infect your computer with some kind of adware or spyware.
Viruses, adware or spyware can sometimes be just annoying but some can be very nasty, resulting in data loss, time loss, fatal computer failure and so on.
The best way to protect yourself is surfing responsibly and not treating your computer as a garbage can. Watch what you’re installing, downloading, clicking on and so on. You don’t need to be paranoid, but you do need to use common sense.
Infection can happen in various ways:
- opening unfamiliar files without scanning them
- clicking on unfamiliar links in emails. Even from seemingly familiar addresses
- opening attachments, even from trusted addresses without first scanning them
- infected removable devices (connecting external hard disk, memory card, etc)
- p2p software’s (not the software itself, but the files you are downloading with it)
- etc
My laptop was infected too, and it took me some time to realize how.
Every now and then, a new browser window would open with a Chinese looking site. The free anti virus scan turned out nothing. I then downloaded a trial version of Spyware Doctor, did a scan, but no results either.
I then searched around and bumped into two nice and free softwares you can try- Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (won the cnet editor’s choice apr 09) and Spybot – Search & Destroy. The first is cosidered one of the best, so you can try it first.
Both are freeware that check your system for infections and other system invaders. I installed it.. and viola! adware found, guess where? camera flash memory card.
How did it get infected? I gave the memory card to a friend so he can download 1GB of photos we took together on a trip. He inserted the flash memory into someone else’s computer, and that was enough, to infect it with that annoying adware.
So, if your computer is behaving strangely, chances are you need some sort of antispyware. You can download either one from cnet.com (trusted site) :
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