Many fear that anti-spyware laws will outlaw legitimate adware, which is a perfectly acceptable form of advertising and commerce is perfectly acceptable, that is, until it takes the form of spyware and tracks a user’s activity and generates reports on this that are sold for illegal activities.

You see, the legitimate adware business is small and focused on market expansion and growth; however, like many things in the technology arena, there are people that are using trustworthy adware to hide their malicious spyware, which is installed on your computer without your knowledge or consent, to then engage in tracking your whereabouts on the world wide web and selling this information, along with your identity, etc.

It’s easy to see how many people confuse “adware” with its more evil counterparts, “spyware” and “malware,” simply because the names sound the same. But you should know that the goals of each of these is quite different and until adware is actually masked as one of the others, it can be a very positive marketing tool, unlike spyware and malware, which greatly compromise your computer and your identity.

The following information may help you better understand:

Malware (think worms, virus, Trojans, etc.) is installed without your knowledge and aside from damaging your entire computer, can wiggle its way into your computer’s individual software applications and actually “force” you to visit a particular website.

Spyware is a general term used to describe software that performs certain behaviors such as advertising, collecting personal information, or changing the configuration of your computer, generally without appropriately obtaining your consent first. Spyware is often associated with software that displays advertisements (called adware – see below) or software that tracks personal or sensitive information.

Adware can be beneficial and used as an effective means of advertising on the Net, UNTIL you consent to some sort of tracking feature it provides, which really turns the adware, although seemingly well-intending, into spyware and when another person visits the “infected” computer and interacts with it, the activity is tracked without their consent (which is what makes it spyware).