Some people will be able to escape having their system infected with a piece of malware of some kind. But for the majority of the people who have a computer, some type of malware on it is a way of life at some point in your computing experience. No one is protected forever. There are so many layers of software on the computer that it is almost impossible to protect each one completely. If you protect the operating system layer, then you are going to miss holes in the application layer. If you protect the holes that are in the application layer, then you are going to miss the holes that are in the web layer. This is why you must keep software on your computer that will help fight these threats. Antivirus as well as anti spyware products will try their best to keep the threats from coming through. But most of the protection that these tools offer is reactionary. That means that the threat is created and then passed around first. After it is passed and has infected several thousands of people then the antivirus vendor finds a way to stop it. This is why you must keep your antivirus software updated at all times. But what happens if your system is one of the unlucky few that get hit by a new piece of malware before anyone knows that it is a threat? How can you tell that it is on there? We hope to answer that in this article. 

Your normal operations seem off somehow

The first step in being able to tell if your computer may have been hit by a virus is by the way that the system runs. If you are person that uses their computer a lot then you most likely can tell when something is off. Even though a computer is a very fast machine, you get used to the speed quickly and you can normally tell if something is not quite right. This is usually a sign that something is running in the background. If you know that you have not turned on any programs that could cause a slowdown, especially if you do not see anything running, then you might have a problem. Turn off the computer so that you can reboot and see if the results are the same. If you still a feel a certain slow down on the system, then the best advice is to run an updated antivirus scan quickly.  

The internet activity is a lot more than normal

If you do not feel a slow down on your computer, there are still other ways that you can tell if your computer has something running that shouldn’t be. Another way to tell is if your internet light on the router is going crazy. Before you become paranoid, you should know that there is always activity between your computer, the router, and the ISP where you get your internet even when you are not using a browser. And you might have other applications open besides the browser that use the internet. This includes applications such as your Instant Messenger client. So turn all of these off and if you still see a high amount of activity then do a scan with your antivirus.  
 

Last sign

If any of your online accounts have been compromised, such as email, then there is a good chance that someone got that information off of your computer. Do a scan to check and make sure everything is OK. 
 
Keep aware of the operations on your computer to make sure that everything is running smoothly. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to software security, there are many fronts on the battlefield. There are a lot of ways that black hat hackers are able to expose your computer to software that will harm it. They have to be tricky in their attacks because if they used the same way every time, then security researchers and the companies that make the operating system would be able to catch on. So to avoid that from happening, there have been many different methods of attack created. We will list the different types of malware that are out in the wild and tell you how you can watch out for them. If you use common sense and the right software then you can avoid any trouble.

Malware types

We will start off with the most basic type of malware infection and that is the virus. A virus is a piece of software (malware) that will run through your computer and start to infect it in different areas. It travels from computer to computer by regenerating itself onto other systems. It keeps doing this until the antivirus companies are able to match its signature. Unfortunately by the time that happens, it has already infected thousands of computers.

The second type of malware we will talk about is the Trojan. A Trojan is a piece of software that hides another piece of software underneath it. The software that it is hiding is the one that will do damage to your system. The job of the Trojan malware is just to deliver the package and make sure that the antivirus software is not able to detect it. Trojans will fool you by looking like innocent pieces of software that you may know already. But fooling you is only half the job of a Trojan. The other half is to fool any software protection that you may have as well.

A third type of malware that will infect your computer is a worm. A worm malware is self replicating and it needs no intervention from a human user. It will create copies of itself and spread itself all over your network. One of the main ways that it is able to travel is through the use of networks, both the internet and local. This is a big reason why you need a firewall on your home network. A worm is one of the many threats that you can get from online when you leave your network unprotected.

For all of these malware threats, there is an easy way to defend yourself from 90% of the attacks. Make sure that you have an effective antivirus running and that you are careful where you go when you surf the web. Make sure that you do not go to web sites that look shady and try to avoid sites that you do not know already. Some sites are just breeding grounds for these kinds of infections.

These are the main types of malware that you can receive on your computer. Each of these pieces of malware can be at different strengths depending on the variant of that particular strain. You must make sure that you do all that you can to protect yourself from these types of threats.