How do you know if someone is hacking your computer?

[Laura G]

I am paranoid that someone has the ability to hack into my computer and watch my every move? How do you know? Could they install spyware? Could they gain access to my Facebook, Hotmail, Twitter, etc.? Is they a way to watch you through your webcam at all times? I have an anti-virus program, but it doesn't make me confident enough.

[Kaspersky Key]

Use kaspersky or NOD32 has better protection than any antivirus

[Timothy]

when stuff is missing

[shallowseed858]

They can install a software onto ur computer that takes screenshots every 5 secs to monitor your activity. If they need to install this they have to go on ur comp like actually go to ur house to do it

[Tony RB]

When you are not using your webcam, cover it with a little piece of paper. That will give you a lot of peace of mind, as far as the webcam is concerned.

You don't say what anti-virus program you have, but no anti-virus program can offer perfect protection. Criminals are constantly trying new programs to use to attack people. They also constantly create new websites and also attack legitimate websites.

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Criminal hackers have figured out how to insinuate their malware into Flash and Shockwave animations and into Adobe Reader. If you have those programs you need to check what versions you have and compare with the current versions described on the Adobe website.

Many websites, like Yahoo, CNN and CNN Money, YouTube and others use Flash for their videos and their advertisers also use Flash.

If someone sends you a website to look at, you can use these three websites to "verify" if it is bad for sure - SafeWeb, SiteAdvisor, and MyWOT. A brand-new website won't show up on these for a few days.

SafeWeb scans the site for malware and allows user comments, but if it says everything is green and good, check the other two, as I have found SafeWeb to be wrong sometimes.

SiteAdvisor also scans the site for malware and allows user comments, it has a clickable graphic to go to other reports too. It has more user comments than SafeWeb.

MyWOT does not scan the site for malware, it relys entirely on user comments. And when people don't like a site, they report.

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Can someone "watch your every move" - if they can get malware onto your computer, then yes. Rootkits are the standard way, where a program insinuates itself into Windows and becomes part of Windows.

When rootkits are discovered and analyzed, Microsoft adds software that can "root out" the rootkits to its program called "Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool" which is downloaded with the critical updates once a month. You can run that program too by finding it on your drive.

C:\WINDOWS\System32\MRT.exe

Thursday, Feb 25, 2010