Ever noticed that your computer’s hard drive is working away while you aren’t even using it (you hear it and/or see the LED flashing)? Is something bad going on? Is it infected with malware which is “phoning home”? Should you be worried?
Probably no need to worry, if your anti-virus program and its list of bad guys is up-to-date, you have a firewall in place and you are doing regular anti-virus scans.
Windows Indexing
One likely reason for this hard drive activity is that Windows is just running its default “Indexing” service. It kindly stays out of your way while you’re working and only does this task when you haven’t used your mouse and keyboard for a while.
This indexing service is updating a database of the stuff on your hard drive – so it can give you results faster if you do a Windows Search. If in doubt, you can look at the network connections icon in your System Tray (where the clock is) to see if your PC is communicating with the Internet. Or you could disconnect the network cable from the back of your computer and see if the hard drive stops working – though this is a bit radical, as it might require restarting Windows to get your networking working again.
Malware “phoning home”?
But what if your Internet connection IS busy when you are not online yourself?
There are a number of programs on most people’s computers that do send information about your PC (possibly with unique personal identifiers) automatically to some companies. It seems that Adobe Flash (the web animation player) sends a lot of info about you to Adobe, just like bad spyware would – according to some online info. And Microsoft’s “Windows Genuine Advantage”, their tool to verify that you are not using pirated Microsoft software, is also said to send unique info identifying your computer to Microsoft.
Several programs will go online automatically, but safely, to look for updated content – without necessarily sending any info about you or your computer. For example, Windows Update is usually configured to automatically download and install – which I don’t recommend (see previous post) the latest Windows patches. And, of course, your anti-virus program will go online quite often to keep you protected against the very latest threats. Your email program probably goes online frequently to look for new messages.
Monitoring outbound communication
Sometimes it’s pretty obvious what’s going on, like when your anti-virus program pops up a message that it is checking your outgoing email (if you haven’t turned those notices off). But, is there an easy way to see exactly what program is connecting to the Internet while you’re not using your computer? The fact is that I’m not sure. So, I’ll do some research on that and post the results soon.
Please feel free to comment below…
Meantime, here’s to a worry-free computing experience…
_jim coe
Tags: anti-virus, malware, security
