What is Adware?

Adware, or advertising supported software is any application that displays advertisements while the program is running. These advertisements are often in their own pop-up windows, or are displayed in their own special status bar.

What is Spyware?

Spyware is computer software that gathers information about a computer user and then transmits that information to an external entity without the knowledge or informed consent of the user.

Often, Adware and Spyware will be integrated into one application to target advertising. These two terms are commonly applied to a malicious category of software, that is known to harvest private information, re-routing web pages to advertisements or illicit websites or worse.

How do I know if I have Adware or Spyware?

These annoyances usually present themselves as unwanted pop-up advertisements, or your web browser may be redirecting you to unwanted pages. Perhaps your bookmarks became suddenly cluttered. Your computer could "feel" slower. Sometimes Adware and Spyware is very difficult to detect.

Where does Adware and Spyware come from?

Adware and Spyware programs are usually installed automatically without the full consent of the user by visiting a malicious website, or come packaged with an application that seems desirable to the computer user (such as Kazaa). Sometimes, a program running on your computer might connect to the Internet and download additional Adware and Spyware components while you are busily doing something else.

These types of applications are usually considered to be a different problem than viruses since they usually function in plain sight of the computer user and spread differently. Also, since they have a tendency to integrate themselves into Internet Explorer rather than into the Operating System, they require different strategies for removal.

Adware and Spyware is a problem that is unique to the Windows world, so the focus for removal and prevention will be on Windows XP. There really aren't equivalents of the tools used to remove Adware and Spyware for Mac OS X.