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Spyware and Adware
Spyware, also known as Adware, is a technology that assists in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge. On the Internet, "spyware is programming that is put in someone's computer to secretly gather information about the user and relay it to advertisers or other interested parties." Usually coming in the form of 'cookies' - these enable the cookie writer to build-up information about what you do and where you go on the Web. As such, spyware is cause for public concern about privacy on the Internet.
What can Spyware do? It can track your surfing habits, abuse your Internet connection by sending this data to a third party, profile your shopping preferences, hijack your browser start page or pages, alter important system files, and can do this without your knowledge or permission. The security and privacy implications of these exploits should be quite obvious and undesirable.
While legitimate adware companies will disclose the nature of data that is collected and transmitted in their privacy statement, there is almost no way for the user to actually control what data is being sent. The fact is that the technology is in theory capable of sending much more than just banner statistics - and this is why many people feel uncomfortable with the idea.
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