Last Updated on February 24, 2020
© Reader’s Digest
You don’t need to be a prominent figure, like a government official or a CEO of a major company to have hackers onto you, trying to get into your computer and steal your private information.
There are many types of cybersecurity threats, and the best way to know if you are under attack is to be informed on how things work. Let’s start with the definition of spyware.
What is spyware?
The definition of spyware is quite broad. Spyware refers to all types of software that collect and pass on information without the user’s consent, recurring to covert methods to do so.
Spyware, of course, is a cybersecurity risk, as it can gather information about a target, ranging from email passwords to credit card information, all the way to keylogging and screen capture.
So, how to prevent being hacked on your computer? The best way to do so is to pay attention to the signs that your computer might be under a cyber-attack. Here is a list of 8 red flags you shouldn’t dismiss.
1. Your computer is suddenly slower
One of the signs of computer hacking could be the simple fact that your computer started to run super slowly out of nowhere. Among the list of cyber security threats, we have, of course, malware infections.
There are many different types of computer viruses, but if your computer takes forever to turn on or even to open up applications, chances are your computer is infected with a worm or even a Trojan Horse.
These types of malicious software will consume a lot of CPU resources, which will eventually overload the computer, resulting in it running slower than it usually does. However, this alone doesn’t prove anything, since the simple lack of maintenance can result in a slow computer.
Anyway, it is always a plus to have a malware scanner installed as a computer hacking prevention measure and, of course, to have the best malware protection installed on your computer.
2. Your fans start “hyperventilating”
