Spyware

Spyware is the term used to describe a software program that is intentially installed on the computer by a user to monitor or spy on what other users of the same computer are doing.
It is a term used to describe a software program that has been designed to track a users activity without the user fully understanding the intentions of the program or not knowing about its installation. Spyware programs are often used to help with tracking users habits and help with delivering proper advertisements to a user. Spyware is installed onto a users machine when installing free programs such as free music sharing programs, visiting web pages such as adult oriented web pages, and through other downloads and plug-ins on the Internet.

Spywares are the single most important threat to the privacy of all Internet users. Spywares are software that are kept hidden, deployed secretly and executed transparently in your system. These spywares collect data from your computer, and send it to a remote database using your own Internet connection. Spywares are of different types.

A spyware can be, a key logger, which logs all the keys that you have pressed. This help the spyware to collect data regarding typed URLs, usernames, passwords, email addresses, credit card numbers etc. just to mention some.

A spyware can also be a browser hijacker, or a browser helper object, that can trap anything that you do with your browser. It can change the home page of your browser, can track any links you click, any advertisement links you are interested, most visited websites, your email addresses and passwords, your downloads.. just about anything.

Some spy-ware can also take screenshots of the system, and also can send them to a remote location.