Adware
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
You can help Wikipedia by writing articles to help lower the amount of redlinks. |
Adware is an advertising computer program that can be installed by other people on someone's computer, sometimes without their permission. It is a controversial topic because sometimes business companies put the program there so they can see what people are doing or what web pages they are browsing. They then put an advertisement that is of the same subject as the web-page the person is looking at. This can be good if the person is trying to buy something, but many people do not want advertisement pop ups or banners. Many people also do not want other people to find out what they are doing or what web pages they are looking at. An example is in the popular peer to peer file sharing program, Kazaa. When someone downloads the official release, it installs adware on their computer that then sends advertisements to the computer. Some people do not like this so they use an illegally modified version of this program called Kazaa Lite.
[change] Removal tools
Removal tools have been developed to assist users in clearing out these unwanted programs. Like many programs that people use for security, the program must be updated often. Updating allows the removal tool to recognize new types of adware. This can be done by downloading files over the internet using the 'update' option in the program.
