Virus Removal Service in Greensboro

Viruses and malware are software that help hackers disrupt a
user’s computer operation, gather sensitive information, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system. They can include computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, and other malicious programs. You’ll notice behaviors such as pop-ups requesting personal or financial information, programs or components that suddenly stop working or your computer slowing to a crawl.

Here are a few examples of how they can get into your system:

Toolbars –Toolbars are additions to your browser that lie right below the address bar (where you type in url’s such as www.google.com. Although there are plenty of useful toolbars that aid you in navigating the internet, many of them also contain some sort of spyware. This spyware will monitor your internet usage and constantly send information to their servers, slowing down your internet connection, and your computer.

Direct Download Sites –Direct download sites are sites that host files that other people can download. The easiest way to identify these sites is by the download button on the site. Many times direct download sites will have two options a ‘High Speed Download’ and a ‘Slower Download’ link. Clicking on the High Speed Download link will take you to a subscription page to subscribe to the site, costing you money. Additionally, many times, the files hosted by these sites are actually malicious. The ads on these sites are everywhere and disguise themselves as buttons.

Deceptive links –Websites sometimes can disguise links to malicious sites as links to sites you go to everyday. For example, a link that says www.facebook.com can end up taking you to www.maliciousurl.com instead. The easiest way to tell if the links you are clicking on are actually taking you where you want to go is to take a look at the bottom left (depending on your browser) of your screen while placing your mouse over the link. The text on the bottom left will show you exactly where that link will take you to, so if you put your mouse over a link that says www.facebook.com, yet on the bottom of your screen, you see www.maliciousurl.com, you know not to click!

phishing sites –Phishing sites are sites that mimic legitimate sites, but are actually malicious and intend on stealing your logon credentials or infecting your computer with some type of virus. These sites look identical to the login sites that you are trying to reach (i.e. facebook, twitter, msn, google, even your banking site etc…). The only way to tell is by looking at the address bar. There are a couple of ways to tell if the site you are going to may be a phishing site. The first thing is the url. If you look in the address bar and the url is not what you expect to see (i.e.facebook.s4if.com or fac3book.com), do not enter your login information.

email attachments –Over 70% of all emails sent in the world are spam emails. That means that more than half of all emails have some ulterior motive to get you to do something with the email. Some of these want to extract your personal information, some of these spam emails want to infect your computer with a virus by getting you to download an email attachment with a virus in it. If you receive an email, that seems legitimate, make sure you trust the sender before opening any attachments.

Here at Computer Repair of Greensboro we see all of these on a daily basis so experience tells us  that the longer you wait to contact someone to fix these issues, the longer these malicious viruses have to do permanent damage to your machine. The best thing to do is shut down your computer immediately and contact us. In doing so we can get your computer(s) started on the right track to being safe and secure from these programs. We are experts at malware and virus removal. Call us today!