- What is adware?
- Why is there such a large movement against
adware?
- Why doesn't my virus protection software protect me
from adware and spyware?
- Why would I want to keep adware on my PC?
- What is the difference between adware and spyware?
- What is malware?
- How do I protect myself and my computer from these programs?
Adware is for the most part harmless. In
fact adware is no different then watching a commercial or viewing an ad in a
magazine. Adware is by definition software that contains an advertisement in it.
Most likely you have several programs that have ads in them on your PC right
now. If you have Microsoft’s Media Player you have adware on your PC. If you
have Real One player or Yahoo Bar you have adware on your PC. These ads are not
in themselves dangerous to your PC. By placing adware in the program the creator
of the program gets paid by the advertising company and can offer the software
to you for free. In this way adware is a benefit to you.
Just as software that is loaded on your PC can have ads in
them, websites can also have ads on them. When you open a page that has an ad on
it the owner of the site gets paid from the advertiser. The more ads you view
the more money they make. This is what makes so many things on the Internet
free.
Once again the problem is greed. Some
unscrupulous individuals are not looking to provide you with a service in
exchange for making money. They create programs that have triggers in them
telling your PC to open to several web pages they own, displaying advertisements
they get paid for.
These programs detect your Internet
connection and open their websites to display their ads to you, so they get
paid. The problem is they don’t want you to just open them once but hundreds or
even thousands of times. The more ads you view the more money they make. These
ads are known as pop-up ads. When these pop-ups are opened they sometimes allow
the download of more adware, which open more websites and open more ads. When
you get enough of these programs trying to open websites and download ads along
with more adware it uses up your processing speed and your Internet connection,
making your PC crawl to a halt.
Sound familiar?
This is an important distinction ALL VIRUSES ARE BAD! No
exception! Your virus protection is there to watch for and stop or remove all
viruses that invade your PC. However, unlike a virus you may not want to remove
all adware or spyware. A good virus protection doesn’t want to give you the
choice to keep a virus or anything else it deems necessary to remove. You need a
program that detects the presents of adware but allows you the choice to keep
it.
As I
said in the beginning of this article, not all adware is bad. If used correctly
it allows you to use a program for free. You may have a game you downloaded that
has a little ad in the corner for blue jeans, or you may use an online
long-distance phone service that allows you to call anywhere in the world for
free. While you are on the phone different advertisements are playing on the
screen. This type of adware is a win-win situation. The programmer gets paid,
the advertiser gets his ad viewed by you and you get a free service. This type
of adware you would want to keep.
If adware is software that displays ads;
spyware is software that spies on you. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? Any software
that collects information on you or your habits is considered spyware. Believe
it or not, not all spyware is bad nor did it start out as being bad. Once again,
it all comes down to greed. The first Internet spyware was known as a cookie.
You may have heard of them. A cookie is a small file that says you were there
and what you did while you were there.
The beginnings of the cookie came from
companies like Yahoo and MSN that allowed you to customize a site the way you
wanted it. Perhaps you wanted to have the weather for La Mesa in the top right
corner and the NASDAQ in the bottom left corner. These changes are saved in
cookies. If you have ever saved your password for an online logon (which
by-the-way you should never do) it gets saved in a cookie. These cookies are
useful and are not generally harmful to you.
What most people don’t understand is that
these cookies can be and are read by the website you visit.
When you go to a website it checks your
cookies to see what you have. If the cookie pertains to the site is opens it and
reads the data inside. If you go to Yahoo, Yahoo’s site is checking to see how
you like your home page setup.
But any site can see these settings. They
can also see all the sites you have been surfing through. If you went to a
website searching for a CD Player you may start getting pop-up adds for CD
Players, CDs, computer equipment, music, MP3s, etc.
Those greedy people with the adware read
the cookies and create pop-up ads that will display things you are interested
in. You see they make even more money if you don’t just view the ad but click on
it and buy something.
However, these cookies can collect other data as well and
when those same infamously greedy people found out about this they thought up
ways to make money at it. At first they just collected information on where you
went on the web so the ads their adware was sending was at least something you
may be interested in. but then someone found they could capture and record the
key strokes you are typing as you type things like usernames and passwords. This
allows them to get into your bank accounts and anything else you do online.
Spyware is also used for Identity Theft.
There is a third type of
software out there called Malware. It is there to cause you problems, to disrupt
your PC for no other reason then to do so. This is the type of software that
virus protection software will catch. A virus is considered malware but so is
spyware and adware when used for bad purposes.
If you feel you may have adware on your system click the
"Remove adware" link to find out how to remove all adware, spyware and malware
from your PC.
Remove Adware
