Because of the threat they impose on your computer system security, it is very important to know more about adwares, those pesky add-ons to freewares and sharewares that are programmed to display advertisements as an income to developers who are offering their technology free of charge. But how exactly would one know is his or her computer is already “infected” by adwares. What are the signs that can tell a user if adwares are installed on his or her system? Well, here is a list of some of the tell-tale sign that adwares are already lurking in the background of your computer:

1. The first and most obvious sign involved advertisements that keep on popping up on your desktop while running an installed freeware or shareware in your system. These pop-up ads may be search results relating to websites you are browsing or recently visited, or relating to keywords you typed into search engines.

2. A new homepage on your web browser is also a tell-tale sign that there is an adware running in the background of your system. Instead of the homepage you set, some other web page is popping up when you open a web browser or a new tab. This is also called a hijacked homepage.

3. A new set of toolbars is another sign of adwares recently installed to your system. This is even more true if the toolbar consists of buttons leading to websites selling a product or service that you didn’t sign-up in the first place.

4. Checking you web browser’s favorites or bookmarks, you see new entries that you didn’t add there just means some adware has just been installed to your system. Most of these pages are of websites that are providing products and services.

5. Seeing new programs on your start-up program list, especially those you did not install yourself, is also a sign of adwares “infecting” your system.

6. When you type a URL on the web browser’s address bar and another unexpected sites comes up instead, this just means that your host file has been changed by an adware installed in your system.

7. Slow Internet connection and overall sluggish computer performance are also signs of adware infection. This may include delays when loading or refreshing the desktop, applications frequently crashing for no apparent reason and software failures.

8. One more way to tell that adwares are installed in the background is experiencing frequent automatic system shutdowns with no apparent reason.

The items listed above are just some of the signs that you can look for to be able to tell if adwares are already up and running on your system. There are instances that two or more may show up while using your computer. But there are also some other ways to tell if malicious softwares are installed. But the bottom line is that you should be able to detect the existence of adwares on your system early to be able to do something about them before they can even do harm to your system and you as well. Vigilance and the right knowledge are actually what most computer-users need to combat these cyber threats. That is why it is important to be aware and be updated about them all the time.

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