If you suspect your computer has any sort of virus infection, or has been compromised in any way whatsoever, you need to stop using it, immediately, until the problem is fixed.
That means stop trying to check your email; stop trying to look at your bank account; stop trying to buy things online until your infected computer is fixed. If you continue to engage in normal activities on an infected computer, your risk of losing it all to the Internet bad guys grows with every keystroke.
Look at it this way: if you catch the Ebola virus, you don’t keep going out in public, shopping, working and messing around just because you are too busy to be bothered with going to see a doctor. You have Ebola. You don’t look at your situation and figure you’ll take care of things when you “get around to it.” You don’t mouse-click on your Ebola symptoms and select, “Remind me later.” Ignored, Ebola doesn’t get better all by itself; it only gets worse.
Computer infections are the same way. They don’t get better over time. Many computer viruses, left to linger, begin to invite other viruses to visit your machine, compounding your dilemma until your computer is in much deeper trouble than at the beginning. You may think your computer’s biggest issues are that your Facebook page won’t load properly, or that your email never wants to come up, but I assure you, if your antivirus program keeps throwing up alerts at the same time you are complaining about Facebook problems, you need to shift your focus away from all else and deal with the real problem at hand: your computer is sick. Nothing else will work right until it is healed.
Computer viruses, generally known as “malware,” are designed to change the way our computers behave. These changes can sometimes be obvious, manifesting themselves as crazy popup ads, programs you’ve never seen before, or erratic behavior and slow response times. If you click on something, and the wrong thing happens, or nothing happens at all, the cause could be a computer virus.
As often as not, viruses sit quietly in the background, waiting for you to type in a password to some sort of account, be it email, Facebook, Amazon or your online bank account. Even if you have your browser set to automatically sign you in to your online accounts, it is still sending your password across the Internet to those accounts in order for you to be granted access. The only difference is, it “types” the password for you, freeing you from the drudgery of having to manually type the password, yourself. Either way, the password is sent across the Internet, and the viruses hiding inside your computer can harvest those passwords, sending them to Internet criminals, who will be happy to use them as a way to steal your money.
If you have even the slightest clue that your computer has a virus problem, get it off the Internet, fast. Do not keep trying sign in to your email or Facebook accounts. Get your computer fixed first, before you become another sad statistic, ripped off by the Internet bad guys.