7 signs that you hacked

Once the viruses were written to entertain, to demonstrate the knowledge of its author. Now they are increasingly serving purely practical malicious purposes: theft of passwords, sending spam, create botnets and so on. This infection can sit for years in your system and almost no issue of their presence. It is therefore important to know the basic signs of infection.

1. Your passwords have been changed

If you get a letter with a message that your password to any service has been changed while you have not done anything like this, it is a definite sign of attempted or successful break. The best way to protect a two-level activation of the advance authorization of those services, where applicable.

2. Changes in your browser

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

3. Unusual behavior of the system

Any unusual events that you can not explain, should be the object of your attention. For example, if you see a new system tray icon, which you can not install or run. Or when the system is started on the second appears and immediately disappears black command prompt window.

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

4. Redirect to strange websites

If every time the introduction of a search query, you get not the usual Google or Yandex, and some odd pages with advertising if you are persecuted everywhere pop-ups, it is a sign of infection virus DNSChanger. Although its epidemic had largely died down, but some modifications are found so far. He specifically slips you the pages of their advertisers, and can also block update antivirus programs.

5. New antivirus or system optimizer

Some sites (especially with not very good reputation) you shock announcement of a viral infection of your system, followed by a proposal to establish a "most reliable anti-virus." Approximately the same is the spread of various fake web optimizers systems and accelerators.

If you succumb to the entreaties and downloaded a program like this, then consider that your system is already infected. Fake antivirus software can simulate the work and even neutralized report about malware, but actually it is really is.

6. The sudden appearance of new friends or messages

If you see a sharp increase in the number of friends and keep track of the pages in social networks, and most of them you did not know, this is another sign of tampering. It is possible that your accounts have been hacked and will be used to send spam. No less suspicious sign is the emergence of social networking updates and messages to friends that you have not been contacted.

7. In your account is from a different location or device

Some services, especially those related to classified information are system alerts that have entered into your account from another country or from a new device. In Gmail, you have the opportunity to verify this information directly from the main service window (link in the lower right corner). Never ignore such notices and immediately try to change your password in the event of symptoms such unusual activity.

Decision

In that case, if you find one, some, or even all at once the above symptoms, it is likely your computer has undergone a successful hacker attack. This is not a cause for panic, in most cases it is possible to fix it.

• Remove from your computer all programs that do not use or that are unfamiliar to you.
• Set-known and well-established anti-virus. Many manufacturers produce special lightweight free versionWhich can be useful for a quick cure.
• Change the network settings for one of the third-party DNS services. For example, OpenDNS or Google DNS. More.
• Change the passwords on all your accounts in the first place - to e-mail and social networks. Check the list of Web applications that have access to your data in Twitter, Facebook, Google+. More.
• Reset the status of your browser in the default. More.