by Joeseph C. Byrnes

Created on: March 09, 2009

"Hacked" is a term which originally applied to someone forcibly entering your computer, through some secret means, and then manipulating the information in it. Nowadays however, when most people refer to being "hacked" they are referring to a virus or some sort of spy-ware called mal-ware. This is not really hacking, and the two are dealt wiht differently. Most of the time people do not realize that they have mal-ware on their machines as it is unobtrusive and runs silently without telling you. For this article we will deal specifically with malware.

If your computer is hacked or you suspect you have mal-ware, the first thing you should do depends on whether you have a warranty or not. If it has a warranty then take it in to have it serviced and tell the technicians that you believe your computer has been hacked and why. Letting them deal with it can alleviate hours of frustration for you, as most computers today are designed to make it difficult for the average home user to service. The technicians at your local store should have all the software necessary to restore your system to perfect working order.

If you do not have a warranty then you should try to find out what type of mal-ware it is. If your computer is performing badly enough that you believe it has been hacked then you should be able to describe its behavior (we are assuming that your anti-malware programs have not been able to isolate the mal-ware or that like me you do not use anti-malware). Using www.google.com to search for the symptoms of your problem can often lead to a diagnosis and instructions for removing the malicious software. The internet connects you to the entire electronic world, and chances are that someone else out there has already been faced with the same situation.

On a side note, some people recommend various spy-sweepers or anti-virus programs and using them to fix your system. I do not. While an anti-malware program works for some of the smaller, simpler threats, once you have a virus or spy-ware on your machine that is serious enough to cause it to behave erratically, it is usually too late to install something to fix it. Anti-malware software is best used to prevent malicious attacks, not remove them. Also, many of those anti-virus/anti-spyware tools are just as problematic for your computer as the malware is. McAfee and Norton are in my opinion the two worst. For one thing, they both utilize too many system resources, and will cause your computer to slowly. They also cause

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