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Chances are you have seen at least one film with hackers. These films tend to glamorise hacking but although the essence of these events (i.e. people hacking in and stealing information) is true, the way it is done in reality is very different.
Spyware is a fairly common type of software. A spyware is a program which collects data from your computer and sends it to some other location, without your prior authorization and without asking for confirmation. Spyware is often concealed behind otherwise useful software, like peer-to-peer software or browser add-ons. In other cases, spyware comes as a "bonus", bundled with some other program, claiming that it improves your experience.
This is why spyware is rather difficult to detect. To the outside world, spyware looks just like any other program. In fact, there are a lot of programs which send out perfectly legitimate data over the Internet. Even your web browser does. As a consequence, spyware cleaning software, such as Noadware, typically work by using a large database of programs which are known to be harmful. Cont...
Spyware is not just about stealing your personal data, such as credit card numbers or passwords. Although the common knowledge is that passwords and other such sensitive information are the most important target of spyware, these make up only part of the data that is, in fact, stolen. So what else would get stolen?
The answer is: well, just about anything that could be of use. The websites you visit, for instance, which give hints about your interests and, thus, hints about what ads you would be more likely to read. What programs you use and how often you do, what you search for on the Internet and so on. These can be useful for various purposes, like marketing studies.
You may say, and rightly so, that in some cases there's no harm done, and you are usually right: the kind of information that spyware sends out is not always harmful to you in any way, and it is often the kind of information that you would reveal if you were simply asked. However, this doesn't mean that any spyware program is like this especially in view of the current climate of 'Identity Theft', which is why you usually want to keep your computer spyware-free.
Furthermore, you have to ask yourself this question: would you give away some information regardless of how it would be used? I would certainly reveal some information about myself to a student studying Economics, but I doubt I would do the same thing for someone who just wants to spam my mailbox. Spyware is a great way to skip these “ethical” questions: if you don't know information is stolen from you, you cannot ask any question.
The bottom line of this is that there is really no “legitimate” spyware. Granted, some companies do collect usage statistics from you, but this is done by adhering to a very strict set of guidelines: you are always asked for confirmation before sending information, the information is completely anonymous and a very strict set of privacy-related rules are adhered to. There is no real justification in obtaining data about anything you do without asking you first.
You can use any anti-spyware program to keep your computer spyware-free, but chances are you want a high-quality program, such as Noadware for example. Using a good anti-spyware program ensures the data you store on your computer is safe, regardless of what kind of data it is.
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