Adware is truly an amazing thing.  While people consider it to be an utter annoyance and a threat to their computer, adware has fueled the Internet in positive ways that people do not usually think about.  So why should you know about adware?  Well, in short, it is one of the main technologies that made the Internet what it is today, which can be considered both a good and bad thing.

The media has used the term adware to mean so many different things that people mainly consider it to strictly be a malicious program.  While adware in of itself is not malicious in nature, its counter-parts are, specifically spyware and malware.  This is obviously where the media screws things up.  In their stories, the media usually categorize threats as “adware” when in fact they should be using terms like “spyware” or “malware”.  Adware’s initial intention was just to change the paradigm in which advertisements are delivered to users.

Since adware was initially just intended as a new way to deliver advertisements, there was much money to be made by simply adding adware to whatever was being developed.  Before you knew it, the funding provided by adware was conjuring new forms of software, such as freeware and shareware.  The whole idea of being able to download and use software for free also created a paradigm of its own; online communities.  Users and developers started collaborating with one another to make free software better and more functional, and thus rival any commercial competitors.

At the same time, adware can be considered as a downfall of the Internet.  While adware was funding all sorts of different projects, it was also starting to get on people’s nerves.  Adware started to become more abusive and pop up advertisements on people’s computers more often.  On top of that, people started installing and adding adware in places where people would not expect it, such as on commercial products and websites.  What once used to be a new advertising medium has now become a disaster.

Then hackers and malicious software programmers got involved.  They started to make their own versions of adware that were more unethical in nature.  As businesses became more desperate, they turned to developers which would develop a different breed of adware.  Instead of just popping up advertisements on people’s computers, this adware would also track people’s browsing habits as well as various other things.  This act of tracking and monitoring brought forth a new breed of adware: spyware.

The evolutions of adware didn’t stop there though.  Taking the theory of bundling adware with software, hackers started taking out the advertising aspects of adware to make them more stealth-like and difficult for users to identify.  More and more often you would hear about viruses, Trojans, worms and the like being bundled with free software without the knowledge of users (or even developers in some manners).  With a goal to just infect and destroy as much as possible, malware started entering computers worldwide.

When things did not look like they could get any better for adware, they did.  Security experts started collaborating with one another to deliver cost-effective and free security software to eliminate malware, which was partially funded by legitimate adware. Now, you can find tons of security software freely available on the Internet, a lot of which rivals commercial counterparts.

Currently, adware is still seen as a threat and considered more of a nuisance than anything else.  Fortunately, with plenty of anti-adware solutions freely and commercially available now, people can now control the types and amount of adware they want on their systems.

About the Author:

Josh George has been a member of the computer security community since 1998. He continually strives to educate people on the topic while writing many papers and giving speeches to a variety of groups including members from the F.B.I, N.S.A and D.o.D. While he has worked in the government sector, he now works towards helping civilians. His computer protection website covers a variety of topics such as adware, spyware, viruses, worms, Trojans and Rootkits and provides information, recommnded tools, and best practices.