What you must know about Virus & Malware Prevention Detection and Removal

For many years i was a desktop technician. Virus and Malware removal was task i performed daily. Window 10 was a big step forward in protection from nasties, but the bad guys have evolved and continued to develop sophisticated programs to disrupt your computer and obtain your data.

If you are not on Windows 10, i urge you to upgrade now. This is mainly due to Microsoft’s improvements to Windows Defender and making it work as the default antivirus application automatically. Built in improvements to privileged exculations and Windows Firewall have helped too.

For our phone and tablet users , these devices can get virus and malware also.

Below is some steps and recommendation for preventing and combating Virus and Malware. No antivirus solution is perfect, nor will it make your device completely immune. But it is a safety guard, like wearing a seatbelt in your car.

Prevention is the best approach

The best way to be safe is to prevent from getting virus’s and malware in the first place. Here’s a quick guide on how to help prevent.

  • Make sure that you have some sort of antivirus software running. As mentioned above, Windows 10 runs Windows Defender by default. MacOS, Linux, Android and iOS mobile devices (iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad) do not come with antivirus software. Below are some recommendations.
  • Make sure your antivirus software is configured to install updates and perform scans automatically. These updates are vaccines for new strains of virus’s & malware. The best antivirus client is one that has all of its most recent updates.
  • As far as person computers and phone use is concerned, here is some of the most frequent causes of malware infection.
    • Media downloads such P2P and BitTorrent. Their website search engines and apps are riddled with popup ads and nasty links.
    • Malware-infected webpage’s, posing fake pop up notifications and ads, once clicked viruses may be installed.
    • Email attachments, don’t open any that are from unknown senders or seem suspicious.
    • Links in emails. never use a link in a email to traverse to your bank, paypal, amazon or to pay bills. Type the address manually.
    • Mobile apps downloaded from outside of the App Store or the Google Play Store. Apple and Google work very hard to detect and eliminate vulnerability’s in their stores.
    • Avoid clicking on ads in Mobile applications.
  • Malware can cause more damage when it’s in an account with administrative (root) privileges. MacOS will typically use admin or root only when needed. As for Windows, try to do your everyday work and play in an account with limited privileges. Only log into your administrative account when you need to install software, change settings, or modify other user accounts. Whichever account you’re using in Windows, be very careful when you allow UAC (user account control) to perform actions. On Android or Apple phones, look carefully every time an app asks for permissions. Don’t hesitate to deny an app permissions it asks for. For instance, why should your mobile puzzle game need access to your camera or your phone contacts?

What if you suspect a Virus or Malware?

Have you got a virus or malware? Here are three of the most common indications of a virus or malware on your device.

  • Your PC or phone runs much more slower than usual.
  • Your antivirus software tells you that there’s a virus or malware. Make sure that you’re familiar with your antivirus software’s user interface, so you don’t get fooled by the below.
    • A common attack approach is a pop-up window or webpage says, “you have a virus!”. Unfortunately this isn’t coming from a helpful entity that wants you to get rid of the nasties, the pop-up window or webpage is planning to infected your device. It’s usually a scam of some sort. “You have a virus! Click here to remove it!” Oops, the link triggered a malware download. Or, “You have a virus! Send us Bitcoin here so we can remove it!” No! Do not send them your Bitcoin.

Removing a Virus or Malware

If you suspect malware because your device is running slowly or your legitimate antivirus software is telling you that you have a problem, the first thing you should do is get your antivirus software to run a manual scan, immediately. Dont click on the virus or any popusp. Go directly to your antivirus software and run a scan to validate it.

Often if a virus is detected, your antivirus software will put the malicious files in quarantine. So after your antivirus scan is finished, reboot your device right away. For the trickier to remove viruses and malware you may need to put your operating system into “safe mode” and run the scan again. See below for more removal techniques.

Recommended Virus & Malware Products and Resources.

If you aren’t sure which antivirus brand you should choose for your device, I highly recommend looking at what AV-TEST.org says. Their antivirus ratings are reviewed each month because ultimately antivirus software is only as good as its most recent updates. AV-TEST evaluates antivirus for Android, macOS, and Windows.

Here are some guides to malware removal when your AV software can’t get rid of it.
Remove Viruses, Trojans and Malware from Windows (Free Guide)
Remove Viruses, Adware and Malware from Mac (Free Guide)
Remove Viruses, Adware and Malware from Android phone (Free Guide)
by Stelian Pilici for MalwareTips

How to Remove a Virus From an iPhone and iPad
by Ivan Belcic for Avast Academy

Security Tools to Check for Viruses and Malware on Linux
by Jack Wallen for Linux.com

Trend Micro Maximum Security 3 Devices 1 Year

This Trend Micro Maximum Security subscription allows you to protect your devices against online threats for the next 1 year. It will help you to detect, block and remove viruses, limit your family’s access to inappropriate content, keep track of your passwords, avoid spam and more.

– It comes as an electronic software download for convenient and easy installation.
– You can use the subscription with your Windows PC, your Mac with OS X or higher, or your mobile devices running iOS 9 or Android 4 and higher.
– This subscription gives you access to Trend Micro Maximum Security for 1 year.
– You can install this subscription on 3 of your devices.
– The software comes with parental controls, allowing you to limit your family’s access to inappropriate websites and content.
– It will allow you to detect viruses on your device and remove them.
The software also includes anti-spam filtering to help you avoid spam content.
– It comes with free 24×7 tech support.

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