Took me 4 hours to find a keylogger on my own laptop

Honestly, I thought my laptop was just acting slow until I saw weird mouse movements and my password field filling itself. I ran three different virus scans and they all came back clean, which made me panic. Turns out it was a really new keylogger that hid in a system folder named like a Windows update file. I had to download a specific tool called Malwarebytes and run it in safe mode to finally catch it. The whole thing took me from about 7 PM until almost midnight to fully clean out. I felt so stupid for clicking a link in a fake shipping email a few days before. Has anyone else had a scare like this where the usual scans didn't find anything?

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the_michael6mo ago

Ran three different virus scans" sounds like overkill. Most people just run one and call it a day.

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reese_ward506mo ago

My old laptop got a virus one scan missed, @the_michael.

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paul_morgan5mo ago

It reminds me of how we often trust one check for anything important. We get one medical opinion or one price quote and assume it's the full story. Relying on a single scan, or a single source, leaves too much room for error. Michael's approach of using multiple scans is just a more careful way of doing things. It's a good habit that applies to more than just computers.

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