ACCORDING TO KASPERSKY’S LATEST ‘State of Stalkerware’ report, over 40 percent of those surveyed worldwide said they’d experienced stalking or suspected that they were being stalked.

Stalker ware is a form of spyware, which is used by bad actors like domestic abusers to monitor people’s devices without their knowledge. While it’s most commonly found on mobile devices to harvest information like GPS data, your PC can also be infected.

Keyloggers, which silently record your keyboard activity, are a good example. Other forms of stalker ware may monitor your personal files, or even spy on you via your webcam.

Stalker ware is difficult to remove, as it’s deliberately designed to disguise itself as a legitimate program or system process.

In this guide, you’ll discover how to reboot your machine to safe mode, so the stalker ware can’t execute. You’ll also discover how to prevent it from launching, as well as how to remove malicious files from your web browser and system cache.

–NATE DRAKE

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1 PLAYING IT SAFE

If you suspect that your machine has been infected, restart it immediately. On the sign-in screen, hold Shift to restart again. Next, choose ‘Troubleshoot’ > ‘Advanced Options’ > ‘Startup Settings’ > ‘Restart’. Tap ‘4’ to boot into safe mode.