what is adware?

adware is any program that displays advertisements for something other than itself...

sometimes the display of such advertisements is completely benign and serves as a means of subsidizing the development of software or the provision or services... for example, older versions of the opera web browser displayed ads to users who hadn't paid for the browser in order to help pay for the cost of development of the software... users had the option of using the free version and letting the advertisements take up a certain portion of the screen or paying for the ad-free version and getting more screen real-estate with which to browse with... another example is the internet service providers that used to (and perhaps still do in some locales) provide free internet service so long as you used their custom connection software which utilized part of your screen real-estate to display ads...

while all that sounds ok, that's just the well behaved adware... sometimes 3rd party adware is bundled with software the user downloads... ideally the presence of this adware is made obvious during installation and the user given an opportunity to opt out of the installation - also ideal would be that the adware is easy to find and uninstall once on the system... however, often the presence of the adware is hidden in an EULA (End User License Agreement) that no one reads and is installed in such a way as to make it difficult for the user to find it and/or remove it...

when adware is installed in secret and/or is made difficult to find and/or remove it qualifies as a trojan horse program and it is this combination of adware and trojan that most people are talking about when they speak of adware in a malware context...

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