Quite often viruses will get on to laptops and the user is unaware of the actual threat of the virus. It is simply assumed that a virus will stop your laptop from working correctly and may damage your laptop. However this is not the case and viruses can have far wider and greater implications for the user.
Laptop repair Birmingham has identified the top five reasons why you should have a virus removed off your laptop as soon as you are aware of it’s existence.
1) ID Theft. Some viruses will install what is known as a key logger on your laptop. This is a stealth bit of software that is hidden from the user and it’s main purpose is to log everything that is typed on to your laptop keyboard. The key-logging software will collect all keystrokes and store them on your laptop. On a regular basis, hourly/daily the key logger will email the collected keystrokes to the virus makers under cover.
This means that eveything that you type into your laptop someone else will know about. This has implications for ID fraud and theft as well as credit card fraud and possibly even wider implications if the laptop is used for business purposes and confidential information is processed on the laptop.
The majority of residential customers do online shopping so every time you enter your credit card details the virus maker will know your details and they can start to use these details to go on a spending spree!
2) Internet disconnection. Your Internet may be disconnected by your ISP (Internet service provider) depending on the type of virus you have on your laptop. This is because some viruses will be part of what is known as a bot network or zombie PC network. Your laptop then becomes useful to a virus maker for Internet crimes such as spamming emails, they will use your laptop to relay spam emails. It then looks like you are the spammer! Other types of crimes include DOS attacks (denial of service). This is when the virus maker holds a website to random and tells them that if they do not pay a certain amount of money they will attack the website with their bot network (your laptop and many others) If the DOS attack happens the website will stop working and big websites that have a lot of revenue generation can loose millions within a few hours if their website is compromised.
To stop these bot networks your ISP has monitoring software which it uses, if it notices your laptop is part of a bot network, your Internet will be disconnected!
3) Hard drive malfunction/laptop overheating. If the virus is utilising a lot of your laptop’s computing power to carry out spam DOS attacks then it could overheat your laptop as you’ll find some viruses run away with system processes, which basically means the CPU (central processing unit) in you laptop is constantly being used. This leads to the laptop overheating and can cause damage depending on the laptop model.
4) Loss of data. Quite often a virus will render your laptop useless and not allow you to start up your laptop. This causes laptop booting issues. If you have pictures and other data that is important there is the possibility that if the virus does some damage to the start-up process of your laptop then you’ll never get to that information again, this i where backups become impornatn. Here at laptop repair Birmingham we do have tools to recover data off a laptop that may be infected with a virus and will not start up.
5) Financial implications. As well as the virus that may steel credit card details you have to think about how much it will cost to repair a laptop that has a virus. There are different processes to remove viruses off laptops and depending on how badly infected your laptop is it may be quite costly to remove and repair a laptop that has a virus. Anti virus software should be though of as an insurance policy for your laptop, a bit like home insurance. We recommend that you stay away from free anti virus solutions as there are not always effective and you really do get what you pay for. Staying protected with the correct anti virus solution is vital to a trouble free Internet existence!
If you have any quieries about laptop virus removal or just want a check up on your laptop plesae do not hesitate to get in touch with laptop repair Brimingham.
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