Sanitize (Sanitise) your computer system(s)
If you have just bought your brand new computer and it has never been connected to any network - especially the Internet and you have not connected and read any disks or usb sticks - then you can skip the initial detection of malware and sanitisation and skip to the next section.
If you have been using your computer for a while and especially if it has been connected to the Internet then you must complete this step.
It is actually quite difficult to sanitise an existing system which has been compromised. By this we mean it is quite difficult to be absolutely sure you have detected all the malicious / trojan / spyware software and actually removed it completely. Having said that, most anti-virus scanners and spyware / trojan detectors do a very good job and you can have a reasonable degree of confidence that your system will be clean afterwards - but it is still just possible that the detectors missed something.
Thus some people choose to reformat their disk and re-install the operating system from scratch whilst not being connected to the Internet. However, this has some serious implications - most importantly all your files, vital data, etc will be permanently and irrevocably removed (unless you have backed it up somewhere safe - on another disk or other media e.g. CD-ROMs). You may want to do the extra step of backing up your data and reformatting the hard disk prior to following the rest of the instructions in this page, especially if you are using your computer for Internet banking and the such like - since you would not want a keylogger (a malicious program) to records all your key strokes including passwords and have them sent to a criminal gang. There is another solution which provides peace of mind whilst doing online banking – see the online banking page.
So decide whether your are going to:
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reformat your hard drive (erase everything) and start a fresh
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use anti-virus and spyware removal software click this link for some examples
Or
As with the personal software firewalls some manufacturers have a “free for personal home use license” including getting the latest signatures files which have to be updated regularly – ideally leave the software to automatically update the signature file.
Install the software and scan your system. This should give you a good degree of confidence however - some very nasty malware / viruses / trojans can disable or fool the anti-virus software so the best method of checking your system is to make a bootable CD ROM with the anti-virus software installed on the CD ROM from which you boot your machine.
The following are examples of the types of anti-virus software for the PC.
The following are examples of the types of anti-virus software for the Mac.
The following are examples of the types of spyware removal software for the PC
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