Having covered about what is spyware and why it is important to erase spyware at the post: http://estopspyware.com/why-you-must-stop-spyware/what-is-spyware-and-reasons-to-stop-it, I am now covering the possible symptoms that will indicate that your PC is infected with Spyware.

If you found the symptoms to match with yours PC, then it is certainly the time to clean the existing and stop spyware - new ones, from entering into your PC again.

These are the possible signs that could be interpreted as spyware infection on your PC:

i). Popup Ads Are Seen All The Time On Your PC Screen And You Are Not Able To Close Them

Too many ads are served by malicious software called spyware and you may see these ads even when you are not using your browser at all. Most of these advertisements are of adult sites, software crack sites, key gens and when you click on these ads, the spyware programmer makes money for directing traffic to the site or for some other purpose – sales commission etc.

Even if you click on X on the ad window for closing these unwanted popup ads, they instead take you to a site and more popup ads open. You will start pulling your hair for sure as you cannot do anything with these unwanted hordes of ads.

ii). Web Browser Shows Unwanted Toolbars And Search Bars

Your web browser will show toolbar (small window having icons and menu items etc.) that you never yourself installed. The toolbar installed by spyware in your browser displays more popup ads and may bring more malware (harm causing program) in your PC. This toolbar may return again and again after you have even removed them through their Uninstall program.

The same happens for unwanted installation of search bars (box where you can type your keywords for searching) in your browser. When you search from these search bars installed by spyware, the details of all sites visited by you are sent without your knowledge. Some of the spyware search bars shows lot of ads on the bar as well as the searched pages making your PC and network connection slow. The purpose of these search bars again is to make money for diverting traffic, making sales or infecting your PC more.

iii). PC Becomes Very Slow And Keyboard Unresponsive

The response of your personal computer becomes very slow. Example - The program that used to load in 10 seconds now takes too much longer, i.e., 40-50 seconds.

This happens as spyware codes are designed solely to consume your PC resources for showing you unsolicited ads in bulk, tracking your actions on PC and then sending them to remote party who programmed the spyware. A PC may crash again and again due to spyware that consumes almost all the computer resources - RAM, network bandwidth, processor time etc. forcing the other applications to stop responding, leading to crash of the spyware infected computer.

The keyboard may become irresponsive with none of the key presses making no effect on your PC, examples: Numlock and Caps Lock keys pressed doesn't make them change their last state – lit/unlit.

iv). Settings Of Your PC Are Changed Without Your Knowledge

Some of the spyware may make your Antivirus software and Firewall program off, modify your browser home page, browser settings of favourites with sites of spyware coder instead of yours (browser hijacking) and change the Internet network connection settings so that you are not able to connect (for finding tools etc. to cure it) to the Internet.

Even if you change the above mentioned changed settings to yours, they revert back to the same (spyware settings) after the PC is rebooted. Really disgusting!

v). You Start Getting Emails About Products That You Only Searched

Spyware monitors the sites visited by you and then starts sending you the relevant ads of the products matching the pages you surfed, by email. Knowing your email address is not a big deal for spyware as some of them monitor keys pressed by you.

The purpose behind sending you emails is to make money if you buy the product by first clicking the ad in your email and then buying the recommended product. These emails can come from different marketing companies who have been sold your details and the products you are interested in, by the spyware infector (human/humans).

vi). Typing Of Usernames And Passwords Becomes Very Slow

When you type usernames and passwords on the sites, the response shown on the site (you can see the typed name and the password shown by other characters) becomes slow. This can happen because the spyware secretly hidden on your PC is monitoring the keys being pressed by you. Here, I don’t have to tell you that it’s very scary as someone unknown knows your usernames and passwords. These usernames and passwords can be used for financials gains to the spyware programmer. Thus, ways to Clean and Stop future spyware is must.

vii). Browsing Becomes Damn Slow As spyware uses your network bandwidth to send the usernames, passwords, sites visited by you and other information periodically, the browsing of your PC becomes slow. Sometimes, you may see that there are transmit and receive signals at the right bottom of your taskbar (where computers are shown connected) but you will see nothing happening in your browser. This will happen as spyware will be using the bandwidth for sending and receiving data most of the time.

viii). Nonsense Popup Alerts

You start getting fake popup alerts such as "Your PC has registry errors" Or "Your PC is infected with virus", "Errors found in your PC, click here to scan, clean and stop spyware for Free" etc. These alerts are not based on real scanning of yours but are randomly generated so that you feel that you must do something to get rid of the mentioned wrong alert. The purpose of these alerts again is to make money from you.

ix). New Desktop Shortcuts and Icons On Your Windows Taskbar

A spyware can automatically create new shortcuts on your computer desktop and can add new icons on taskbar of your Windows PC. Most of the time you will not be able to remove them.

x). Frequent Firewall Alerts That An Unknown Program Is Trying To Access The Internet

You will start getting firewall alerts that a new unknown program is trying to access the Internet. This could be spyware trying to send the confidential information to the spyware programmer.

Depending on the design of the spyware, in some cases, spyware can turn off firewall so that it can send and receive data without issues. xi). New Unknown Programs In Windows Add/Remove Programs Which Cannot Be Removed

You will see new programs added in Add/Remove programs of Control Panel, which are unknown to you. If you try removing these unwanted programs which you never installed, you will not be able to do so as the Uninstall option will not respond or Add/Remove programs will close.

xii). Taskmgr, regedit and msconfig programs becomes Non Accessible

In case of some spyware infections, Task Manager available through taskmgr command, Registry Editor available through regedit command and Microsoft System Configuration Utility available by running by the command msconfig in Windows doesn't work. If these commands are typed in the Run window, the window just closes and the desired programs never run. This is done to prevent you from removing spyware program.

xiii). You Find Lot of Undeliverable Returned Mail in Your PC Mailboxes

You start getting lot of bounced emails in your online mailboxes with the email addresses that you yourself never sent emails to. A spyware infection can make your computer a zombie - a machine in control of someone remote who is using it for sending spyware and malware infection to other PC’s. How smart but really bad for the PC user whose PC is infected with spyware!

Now, if you are experiencing one or more of such symptoms on your PC, then may be your PC is infected with spyware. You must then clean your PC of spyware and then implement strategies to stop spyware from coming to your PC again. It is not necessary to have all the above listed infected spyware symptoms on one PC. You can have one or more of these spyware infections depending on the type of spyware that corrupted your computer.

I will soon write on the ways spyware enters your PC and once you know how it comes to your PC, you can take preventive measures to stop spyware. Makes sense, right?

Let me know your frank comments and thanks for your time in reading this article. I am sure that the PC users having computers can now easily identify if their PC is having spyware and why they need to clean and stop spyware urgently. The online world is full of bad people who would try to take your money by cheating you and spyware is one of the way to do so. So, equip yourself with the knowledge provided over here and don't let these spyware infectors cause any harm to your PC and you.