malware is an umbrella term for all bad or malicious software... this includes viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, logic bombs, keyloggers, backdoors, spyware, adware, etc...
it should be noted that for a long time (and to a large extent, even now) the public at large have used the term 'virus' as the umbrella term for all such software, largely out of ignorance of the field...
more recently there has been a push by certain commercial interests to repurpose the term 'spyware' as the umbrella term for all such software - in part because increasingly on the internet spyware is taking on the connotation of being anything we don't like/want on our computers... while this is very reminiscent of trojan (which is itself an umbrella classification), repurposing an existing term to encompass all bad software based on the whims of the uninformed public is absurd and will eventually be made obsolete by the very whims those commercial interests are chasing...
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