Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behavior that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their privacy or endangering their device's security. This behavior may be present in malware as well as in legitimate software. Websites may engage in spyware behaviors like web tracking. Hardware devices may also be affected.Spyware is frequently associated with advertising and involves many of the same issues. Because these behaviors are so common, and can have non-harmful uses, providing a precise definition of spyware is a difficult task.
History:-The first recorded use of the term spyware occurred on October 16, 1995 in a Usenet post that poked fun at Microsoft's business model. Spyware at first denoted software meant for espionage purposes. However, in early 2000 the founder of Zone Labs, Gregor Freund, used the term in a press release for the ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall. Later in 2000, a parent using ZoneAlarm was alerted to the fact that "Reader Rabbit," educational software marketed to children by the Mattel toy company, was surreptitiously sending data back to Mattel.
Since then, "spyware" has taken on its present sense.
Spyware is mostly classified into four types: adware, system monitors, tracking including web tracking, and trojans;examples of other notorious types include digital rights management capabilities that "phone home", keyloggers, rootkits, and web beacons. These four categories are not mutually exclusive and they have similar tactics in attacking networks and devices. The main goal is to install, hack into the network, avoid being detected, and safely remove themselves from the network.
Spyware is mostly used for the stealing information and storing Internet users' movements on the Web and serving up pop-up ads to Internet users. Whenever spyware is used for malicious purposes, its presence is typically hidden from the user and can be difficult to detect. Some spyware, such as keyloggers, may be installed by the owner of a shared, corporate, or public computer intentionally in order to monitor users.
