What are the differences between Viruses, Ad wares, and Spy wares?
Wednesday, July 01, 2009 Publications by Jem's
Initially there were only viruses, which were originally some harmless pieces of codes developed either in the labs or by the programmers working in the companies like IBM. These were mainly pranks, played on each other by the IT professionals. The old IBM workers may memorize the virus named 'gimme cookie" in the era of 1970s. This virus operated on 360 mainframe machines and flashed the words "gimme cookie" on attached terminals with increasing frequency. The words used to go away only after the word "cookie" made an entry into the terminal. It was quite an amusing yet harmless virus at that time.
But the fun was quickly faded out once the PC era arrived and the age of Internet almost covered the whole world. Viruses, which were introduced as a harmless joke has turned out to be the most malicious threat to the entire computer world. These new types of viruses were originally conceived by sociopaths whose only aim was to destroy and harass people. Internet made it possible to connect all over the world while sitting at home and email creates an evolution in the world of business and social communication. This technological advancement has also made it quite easier for the bad people to ply their evil trade.
As the resistance against virus has become harder and more and more moderate edition of anti virus has come into the market. The virus originators have become more sophisticated too. The techniques of introducing viruses into laptops or PCs have become more stylish than earlier. Viruses can be attached on all kinds of media and software starting from word files to email attachments, from downloaded music Mp3s to software. Those who have connected themselves to the Internet have to keep in mind that Internet now is one of the main sources of virus infection and they should make sure that they are not allowing to enter destructive and malicious pieces of codes into the system.
With the technological advancement the style and nature of virus problem have been changed. The bad guys are now making money by introducing sophisticated and clandestine software into the system of an innocent victim. Still there are plenty of outright vicious viruses around but they are now outnumbered by the sheer number of spy ware and ad ware infections.
Ad ware began as legitimate software included with downloaded applications and/or utilities that the computer users supplied from the Internet. In a number of cases user agreed to install ad ware on his/her PC without reading the user agreement, which is usually included in the small print. Such applications are music software, DVD/CD copying utilities, toolbars, instant messaging application and many more.
Ad ware is mostly intended to keep tracks of the Internet site users visit most and present related advertisements to the users. The application developers get revenue from the advertisers for displaying their products. The user may discover that the proliferation of adverts and consequent slow down of system to be quite disturbing but the ad ware is mostly non destructive.
Spy ware is the malicious cousin of ad ware. Wickipedia defines spy ware as computer software that is installed sneakily on pc without informing or taking consent from the users to interrupt or take partial control over their interaction with computer. Spy ware is used to utilize infected computer for moneymaking purpose. Most of all spy ware is installed without informing the users either by attaching with a desirable application secretly or by insisting the users to install it.
The common activities of spy wares are observing and reporting the activities of internet users, delivering unwanted advertisements, recounting user's HTTP requests to adult or advertising sites and stealing user's personal information like bank account/credit card numbers, passwords etc.
Now a days the kinds of threats computer users receive has become quite stylish and wide ranging. Luckily there are a number of equally sophisticated protective measures available in the market. There are good anti spy ware and anti virus software in the market too. A lot of online PC support companies are there too who can help you to remove ad ware, mal ware and spy ware and provide support for leading anti virus programs online. But the computer users especially those who are not much knowledgeable should be extremely careful while using computer and should be equipped with preventive mechanism while accessing Internet.
Source:
www.goarticles.com
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