I'm fairly sure I've been hacked into and I know whose done it if thats the case - so if you are reading this, I'm on to you!! What I want to know is if theres any way to say for sure that its been hacked? Can you take it to a computer shop and they can run tests or anything? Does it take long? Expensive? And can they trace who has done it?
Do you have a firewall installed? Attacks are recorded in the software, so you should be able to tell if your security has been breached and your system "hacked".
It is usual for Firewalls to record literally dozens of assaults every day; they are usually carried out by automated/electronic systems rather than an individual.....but if files have been added or deleted it may be possible to track down the source, although a lot are untraceable....
There are a lot of trojans kicking around at the moment; these are malicious files hidden inside files that you download thinking they are legitimate; if you use Limewire and similar sites, there has been a really nasty one being spread in the last couple of weeks, and not all the anti-virus picks it up