There are many different ways in which you can catch someone spying on your PC, but if the person doing the detective work is a family member or someone in your house, keyloggers are a frequent choice. These are software programs that record every keystroke on a computer, preserving passwords, web sites visited and other information.
Unfortunately, keyloggers are frequently used by spying spouses and other ‘wronged parties’ who want to collect evidence against the PC owner. If you think that your computer might be vulnerable, you’ll want to find and remove keyloggers so that you can use the Internet and other functions in privacy again.
Of course, keyloggers are designed to allow spying on your PC without your detection, but they aren’t infallible. Assuming that the spy has used software rather than a more expensive hardware version, you can find and remove keyloggers when you know where to look.
The first step is to update your spyware and antivirus software, both of which may be able to find keyloggers so you can remove them. Free versions such as Spyware Doctor and AVG might be able to locate them, but you are better off with an inexpensive paid version such as Webroot Spysweeper. These will be able to find more cleverly hidden keyloggers so you can make your PC safe again.
If you think that the person spying on your PC isn’t very clever, or perhaps didn’t want to spend much money on keylogger software, you can check your computer for software that you don’t remember installing yourself. It won’t be easily identified as spyware, but you might be sufficiently familiar with your computer to identify a program that looks suspicious.
Simply go to your ‘Add or Remove Program’ icon in the ‘Control Panel’ and skim through the list of software. You can also check your Windows task manager for programs you don’t recognize, but you don’t want to delete something unfamiliar only to discover that it was pertinent to your machine.
It is also possible for keyloggers to spy on your PC with hardware rather than software. This indicates a spy who is a little bit more advanced, and it might be more difficult to check. Frequently, keyloggers are installed in the back of your keyboard, so make sure you look at your machine and all of its attached parts. Anything extraneous might be used to spy on you.
If you still don’t know if someone is spying on your PC, but you believe they are using keyloggers, your options are limited. First, you can take your computer to an expert who can search the hardware and software thoroughly to ensure there isn’t anything sinister. This can be costly, however, and might yield no results. You can also wipe everything off your machine and start fresh with the recovery disks, but this won’t matter if the spy is using hardware.
To be honest, you may have to buy a new machine entirely if someone is spying on your PC. This is the only guaranteed, foolproof way to ensure your computer privacy, especially if keyloggers have been installed by experienced hackers. In many cases, you can trade your current machine in for a new model, or you may have to put up the investment money required to regain your privacy.
When you find keylogger hardware or software on your computer, you can either remove it yourself or pay a professional to do it. In most cases, it’s better not to attempt to remove it unless you are certain that you know exactly what it is. If it’s a software program, you can generally remove it just as you would any other software program, by going to ‘Add or Remove New Programs’ under the ‘Control Panel’ on your PC. For hardware, you will need to physically remove it from your machine in order to eliminate it, which might be as simple as unclipping a device from your keyboard.
