How to detect a keylogger ?

how to detect a keylogger? You are concerned that somebody may be violating your privacy by recording your activities on your computer.

We present here some techniques to detect keyloggers. A key logger may be of two types - a hardware keylogger or a software keylogger.

How to detect a keylogger - hardware keyboard logger

If you have desktop machine a hardware keylogger can be attached in line with your keyboard. Inspect the back of the computer where you see the computer keyboard being attached. If you see a small cylindrical object that is not part of the keyboard cable, then that is the keyboard logger.

Alternatively for a desktop computer the hardware keyboard logger can be inside the keyboard itself or inside the computer.

For laptops a hardware keyboard logger can be placed inside the laptop.

Such keyboard loggers are very hard to detect. You can try opening the computer and looking inside to see if you see something inline with the keyboard connection.

The best way to avoid a hardware keyboard logger is to buy a clean computer from a trusted source and never allow physical access to the computer to an untrusted person .

How to detect a keylogger - software keyboard logger

First things first, once your computer has been out of your possession or you have browsed unknown websites, there is no way to guarantee that your computer does not have a keylogger or other forms of malware installed.

All we can do is to take the best possible measures to ensure that no keylogger exists on your system. If you are really concerned about your data and privacy you should use a clean system to do the sensitive work every time.

Having said that here are some ways to detect a keylogger, starting with the obvious and going on to more difficult. Any current generation keylogger will take steps to ensure that it is not detectable by the first few of these steps, but we present all of them for thoroughness sake

1. Check the list of running programs On windows you can do this by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete together and looking at the list of running programs in Taskmanager.

2. Check programs that run at startup On windows you can do this by running "msconfig" and looking at programs that run in "boot.ini", "services" and "startup

3. Run anti keylogger software One good, free software to run is Spybot. Such software works by checking signatures of programs against a large database of programs and is largely useless against the newer version of keyloggers which change their signatures constantly (polymorphic keyloggers).

In the next article we will present some information about keylogger blocking techniques using anti keylogger freeware Return from How to detect a keylogger ? to Security and Privacy Software