In today’s world, technology plays a huge role in people’s comforts, leisure and learning. The personal computer and the Internet has been such an essential tool in how people relate to one another and get certain jobs done.

As more people rely heavily on these two items, you will see even more people take advantage of these users. These people will cause untold amounts of damage and be a big nuisance. What is to make life easier can make life crazy.

You may have noticed it is hard to keep the computer from unwanted ads not only from spam and viruses but from something called spyware and adware.

What do Adware and Spyware do?

Adware and Spyware work jointly to bring your Internet to a literal crawl. They keep stabbing at your computer with advertisement popups which can lead to a compromise in your computer’s security and privacy.

What is the difference between Spyware and Adware?

What is Adware –

Suppose you are on the net today. When you go back to surf the next day, your browser homepage has been changed to something you are sure you did not change it to. Not only that but the desktop and computer has a new program installed on it, you are certain you did not do. You, like many others, are a victim of adware.

What exactly is Adware –

Adware is mainly an advertising supported software that is downloaded, displayed and advertised on the computer where the software as been installed.

Because of this installation, it may install another component which will keep sending your computer advertisements usually through popups or toolbar on the browser. Some adware can take over the browser, redirecting you to sites you have no desire to see. (example: this is huge problem from the adult website industry.)

There are some legitimate adwares that do the popups for a source of income by offering users software for free. An example of this is Eudora. Eudora is an e-mail program that can be run in “sponsored mode”. With this mode, the program will display an ad window and maybe three or so links on the toolbar.

This program and others like it do not keep tabs on your computer use nor will it give other companies your information. The best part of Eudora is that once you stop using it, it stops running popups and toolbar links.

What is Spyware?

Spyware is usually used for web tracking.

Suppose you do some on-line banking and settle credit card debt. When you try to use your card, you find that you have been completely cleaned out. You are broke! This is a case of Spyware.

Spyware is dangerous because it monitors all of your Internet surfing including collecting passwords, user IDs, credit card numbers and other sensitive information.

Spyware is very close to a Trojan horse (program that introduces viruses rather than getting rid of them.) which you can download freely but then your computer is infected with spyware itself.

What does Spyware to do the computer –

Spyware steals a user’s computer memory and steal up some of the bandwidth (this is the amount of information that can be used during a specfic period.) Spyware makes surfing the Internet slower even if the user has a high speed connection. Spyware can cause a computer to become unstable or even crash.

License terms because of their sheer size are not read completely when they are downloaded. They contain warnings regarding the software.

That’s the difference between the two computer softwares that are malicious in most instances.