Spyware Virus

In this tutorial, we are going to see What is Spyware Virus?

Spyware is a program that collects information about the computer user on which it is installed (sometimes called a spy) and sends it to the company that distributes it to enable it to build up a profile of Internet users (known as profiling).

The information collected can be:

• tracking the URLs of visited sites,
• the tracking of keywords entered in search engines,
• the analysis of purchases made via the Internet,
• even bank payment information (credit card number / VISA)
• or personal information.

 

 
Spyware is usually installed together with other software (mostly freeware or shareware). Indeed, this allows the authors of the software to make their program profitable, by selling statistical information, and thus to distribute their software for free. It is therefore an economic model in which free software is obtained in exchange for the transfer of personal data.

Spyware is not necessarily illegal because the license of the software it comes with specifies that this third-party program will be installed! However, since the long user license is rarely read in full by the users, they are rarely aware that such software is profiling them behind their back.

In addition to the damage caused by the disclosure of personal information, spyware can also be a source of various harms:

• RAM consumption,
• use of disk space,
• mobilization of processor resources,
• crashes of other applications,
• ergonomic inconvenience (e.g. the opening of advertising screens according to the data collected).

 

 

Types of spyware

There are generally two types of spyware:

• Internal spyware (or internal spyware or integrated spyware) with direct lines of code dedicated to collecting data.
• External spyware, autonomous collection programs installed.

 

How to protect yourself from Spyware?

The main difficulty with spyware is detecting it. The best way to protect yourself is not to install software that you are not 100% sure of its origin and reliability (especially freeware, shareware, etc…).

Also, uninstalling this type of software rarely removes the spyware that accompanies it. Even worse, it can cause malfunctions in other applications!
 
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