Adware is a potentially unwanted program (PUP) that delivers advertisements, flashing pop-up windows, banners, in-text links, auto-play video commercials and other commercial content on the browsers. Additionally, this ad-supported application can initiate redirects to various websites and collect browsing-related information without the user’s permission.

Adware is often confused with spyware. Spyware works in a similar way but is a separate program. It’s usually downloaded unknowingly and tracks your internet surfing habits in order to serve ads related to you.

Here are some signs you have adware on your device:

• Your web browser’s homepage has changed without your permission
• Advertisements show up in places they shouldn’t be
• Web pages that you frequent often don’t display the same way
• Website links redirect you to unintended pages
• Your web browser is extremely slow
• New toolbars, plugins or extensions appear without your permission
• Unwanted software applications start automatically installing
• Your browser keeps crashing
• There is a spike in data usage

Is Adware Dangerous?

Adware is more annoying than dangerous. There will be constant banners, in-text ads and pop-ups that appear inside your browser window whilst surfing the internet. Random windows and tabs may open unexpectedly. Your computer will get slow or crash completely.

There are also cases where adware can collect your data. In this case, the manufacturer can sell your adware data which shows your browsing history and may include your IP address, search queries and web pages recently visited.

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How to Prevent Adware

To prevent adware from downloading onto your device, it’s important to be cautious of any websites that look untrustworthy. You should also be extremely wary when downloading freeware or shareware. Only download these programs from reputable websites that you trust.

Whilst browsing, avoid clicking on any advertisements or notices. A popular notice to avoid is one that says your PC is infected and an antivirus needs to be installed. This is a scam that many people fall for. In addition, you should always keep your operating system up to date on your devices.

Conclusion

I hope you now know what Adware is and how you can prevent it. There are some safety settings in your computer that can be enabled to protect you from any potential adware downloads. Good Antivirus software will block pop-ups on your browser and provide real-time protection against both malware and spyware.

Thank you for reading and for more details on our products and services please feel free to visit us at intellope.com. You may just find what you need to boot your business forward.

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The first thing you should check for in this case is your connection speed. In order to do this, navigate to speedtest.net and click the go button to begin running a speed test for your device. After around 60 seconds, the speed test will present you with your devices results.

Your results will be presented in three stats which are all related to your internet connection speed:

• Ping – also known as latency stands for the number of milliseconds it takes for you to receive a response after sending a request to a server. The lower this number then the faster your connection is to that server. This is extremely important when playing online video games as high ping results will cause the game to lag.
• Download speed – is measured in megabits per second (Mbps) and is how fast your computer can retrieve data from remote servers. The higher your download speed then the quicker you will be able to browse the internet, download files and stream videos.
• Upload speed – is also measured in Mbps and is how fast your computer can send data to other devices on the internet. The faster upload speed then the quicker you can perform tasks such as uploading files to a website. This number is usually less than the download speed since most online activity revolves around downloads.

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In order to speed up the internet you can try to close applications which are Network-Heavy.

If one program is heavily using the network then other applications will suffer, so when experiencing slow network speeds check to see what apps are using your network connection and close them down if necessary.

To do this, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager then click more details to expand the window if required. Within the Processes tab click the Network header to sort running apps by their network usage.

If any unnecessary program is using excessive bandwidth then you should close it down in order to free up resources for the applications, you require. This is especially important if you want to perform a network-intensive activity like playing online games or video streaming.

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Some common network culprits include:

• Cloud storage services like Dropbox syncing many files.
• Torrent software.
• Files downloading in your browser.
• Video Streaming, especially in 4K or HD.

Thank you for reading and for more details on our products and services, please feel free to visit us at intellope.com. You may just find what you need to boot your business forward.

The post Is your Internet running slow on your Windows PC? Here are some tips which can speed it up first appeared on Intellope.