Your computer is at risk of being hacked. You might not realize but millions of hackers, scammers and other cyber-criminals are hard at work to bring your computer down. What are they after? Starting from our social media accounts, financial information and even social security numbers, these individuals often steal entire identities of unsuspecting people for their own devious gain.

The Best Way to Get a Virus Is? Downloading Suspicious Files

Despite knowing this to be 100% true, we still download suspicious videos or files (pirated movies, applications, software etc). Hackers have devised many ingenious ways by which they can easily disguise a malicious file and make it look harmless to unsuspecting people. We find out these ways in the following;

Changing or Hiding the File’s Extension

There’re many ways to hide the “.exe” present in a file’s name. The easiest way so far is already done for them by the natural default settings in Windows. The settings hide file extensions so the title looks cleaner but hackers have a field day! They can name the file anything and it’s highly likely that we won’t see the extension.

Sending a Trojan to Your Computer

Hackers try their best to slip viruses to your computer which record everything that’s typed and sends back to the hacker. Moreover, the harmful virus can also send spam e-mails in large quantities and/or attack connected computers.

Before this, hackers and cyber-criminals send in a Trojan horse (with the virus) disguised as something harmless of course. Phishing e-mails are the perfect example in this case.

By Using Your Open Wi-Fi

Answer this question and you’ll be safe from hackers taking advantage of your Wi-Fi network. Is the network encrypted? If your answer is no than everyone has access to your Wi-Fi network which means they can easily connect and download/surf suspicious websites and illegal files from your connection. This is how hackers are able to see and record everything.

Our specialists at Rockland County Computer Repair suggest taking just a few minutes to secure your network is probably a good idea. You’ll find the “How-to” in the router’s manual.

How to Spot a Virus File

Following are helpful tips offered by our computer repair specialists. You should;

• Change the default settings in Windows to show file extensions
• Never use an administrative account
• Install effective security software

Taking note of the above tips will prevent malicious attacks from hackers and cyber-criminals but what about a computer that has already been compromised? Bring the device to Rockland County Computer Repair!