Plain answers to everyday computer security questions in Australia

Every question answered on this site

The site is organised by situation rather than by product, because that is how the problem usually arrives: the machine is slow, a message looked wrong, something was clicked. Each topic page groups half a dozen related questions, and each answer follows the same shape — the short answer, the likely causes, the free things to try first, when to ask for official help, and whether a paid product has anything to do with it.

Five common questions, answered in a sentence each

If you only have a minute, these are the answers people most often arrive looking for. Each one links through to the longer explanation, including the parts that depend on your particular situation.

When the problem is not the software

A surprising share of the questions that reach a help resource like this one turn out to have nothing to do with malicious software at all. Hardware ages. Drives fill up. Mobile broadband becomes congested at six in the evening when a whole street starts streaming. A laptop that has spent three years on a carpet accumulates enough dust to make the fan work twice as hard, and the processor slows itself down to keep the temperature within range. None of that is a security problem, and no security product will fix any of it.

This matters because the moment a computer behaves unexpectedly, the first explanation many people reach for is infection — and that is precisely the assumption a certain kind of advertising is designed to encourage. Treating every symptom as a security incident leads to money spent on the wrong thing and, worse, to the real cause going unexamined for months. A drive that is failing gives warning signs long before it stops, and those signs look a lot like "the computer has gone slow".

So the order of questions on this site is deliberate. Before asking what might have got in, ask what has changed. Did the slowdown start after an update, after a new program was installed, after the machine was moved, or did it creep up over a year? Does it happen in every application or only one? Does it happen immediately after starting up, or only after several hours? Answers that narrow the problem to a time, an application or an event are worth more than any number of scans.

Symptoms and what usually explains them

The table below is a starting point, not a diagnosis. It lists the explanations that turn out to be responsible most of the time, which is not the same as the explanation in your case. Use it to decide which page to read next.

Things to try that cost nothing

These steps are ordered so that the least disruptive comes first. Work down the list, and stop as soon as the symptom goes away — knowing which step fixed it is useful information in itself.

1. Restart the machine properly. Closing the lid is not a restart. A full restart clears stuck processes and finishes updates that are waiting for one.
2. Check free space. A system drive with very little room left will slow almost everything, because the operating system has nowhere to put temporary files.
3. Install the pending operating system and browser updates. Many faults that look mysterious are already fixed; the fix is simply waiting to be installed.
4. Review browser extensions. Disable all of them, see whether the symptom disappears, then re-enable them one at a time.
5. Look at what starts automatically. Programs that launch with the machine are the commonest reason a computer takes four minutes to become usable.
6. Run a scan with the protection you already have. Windows and macOS both include security software that is on by default; there is no need to buy anything to run a scan.

Where a paid product such as Norton AntiVirus Plus fits

Norton AntiVirus Plus is a paid security product sold by its vendor on a subscription. SteadyScope does not describe its features, its coverage or its price, because those are set by the vendor, change over time, and are only accurate on the vendor's own pages. What this site can say is where a paid subscription of any kind tends to be worth considering, and where it is not.

It tends to be worth considering when you want one subscription and one support arrangement covering several computers in a household; when somebody in the house would rather telephone a company than read a help article; or when the protection included with the operating system does not cover something you specifically need. It is not worth buying in response to a pop-up, a phone call, or a page that claims to have found a fault, and it will not repair a failing drive, recover a forgotten password, or undo a transfer you have already authorised.

If a paid subscription is the direction you want to take, read the vendor's own description of what is included and what the renewal arrangement is before you buy. Visit the Norton AntiVirus Plus websitePaid affiliate link. A purchase made after following it earns SteadyScope a commission from the affiliate network that operates the link; your price does not change.

Reporting a scam or harmful content in Australia

Reporting rarely gets an individual's money back, and it is reasonable to feel that it is pointless. It is not: reports are how patterns are spotted, and how warnings reach other people before they lose anything. The agencies below each cover a different kind of problem.

• Scamwatch, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, collects reports about scams and publishes current warnings.
• The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes step-by-step guidance for individuals, families and small businesses, and takes incident reports through ReportCyber.
• The eSafety Commissioner handles serious online harm, including cyberbullying, image-based abuse and illegal content.
• The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner deals with privacy complaints and the notifiable data breaches scheme.
• The Australian Classification Board publishes the classification given to games and films, which is the right reference when deciding what is suitable in a household.

How these answers are written and checked

Questions are chosen because they are the ones people actually type when something has gone wrong, phrased the way they type them. An answer is only published when it can be written without asking you to buy anything, and when the free course of action is described before any paid one. Where a claim depends on a fact that could change — what an agency does, what a law says, what a vendor includes — the answer either links to the organisation responsible or is written as general guidance rather than as a statement of fact about your machine.

SteadyScope has a commercial relationship with one of the products it mentions, and says so on every page where that product appears. The About page explains in more detail how topics are selected and how often the answers are revisited.

Terms you will meet in these answers

Plain words are used wherever a plain word exists. A few technical terms have no good substitute, so they are defined here once.

• Malware — the general word for software written to do something you did not want, covering viruses, ransomware, spyware and the rest.
• Phishing — a message designed to make you type a password or card number into a page that is not what it appears to be.
• Extension — a small add-on that changes how your browser behaves. Useful ones exist; so do ones that insert advertising.
• Two-factor authentication — a second step at sign-in, usually a code or a prompt on your phone, so a stolen password alone is not enough.
• Remote access — software that lets another person see and control your screen. Legitimate support uses it; so do the people who ring claiming to be support.
• Patch — an update that closes a specific fault. Installing them promptly removes most of the opportunities that malware depends on.

Short answers to five more questions