What Is Spyware?

What Is Spyware?

Do you know spyware?

Spyware is software that installs itself into a computer without the user’s knowledge or consent. While in there, it uses the computer to make money (but not for you!) or acquire your personal information for fraudulent purposes.

It’s hard for some of us to believe, but these adware or spyware companies do make a lot of money by signing up as an affiliate or reseller for other companies. When you purchase one of their items, the spyware or adware companies receive a commission, or percentage, of the sale.

This is generally done through those annoying pop-ups – but they also employ more covert and less noticeable methods to ensure they receive credit for generating sales for these merchants.

Although many spyware infections are only meant to make the creator of the program money without stealing your credit card information, social security number or your identity, they still invade your privacy.

So, where did this all start?

Were the bad guys just waiting around for the internet to be invented so they can cause you problems? No one will know that for certain.

All that is known is that spyware begun years ago with cookies. Not the cookies that come out of your oven, but the small files that download to your computer to send information back to its website so the website would be more user-friendly. These cookies were meant to help you in viewing and using the site.

Today, these cookies are probably sending your personal information back to marketing databases or another company that watches what you do on the net.

You can get spyware through free software that you download from a company. It’s free to you because that’s how the company gets statistics about you and all the other users, their computers and their hardware and software. This information could be sold to another organization and you would never know it.