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Spyware as a category overlaps with adware. The more unethical forms of adware tend to coalesce with spyware. Malware uses spyware for explicitly illegal purposes. Data collecting programs installed with the user's knowledge do not, properly speaking, constitute spyware, provided the user fully understands what data they collect and with whom they share it.
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 later came to refer to espionage equipment such as tiny cameras. However, in 1999 Zone Labs used the term when they made a press release for the Zone Alarm Personal Firewall . Since then, computer users have used the term in its current sense. In 2000 Steve Gibson of Gibson Research released the first ever anti-spyware program, OptOut, in response to the growth of spyware, and many more software antidotes have appeared since then.
Spyware can closely resemble computer viruses, but with some important differences. Many spyware programs install without the user's knowledge or consent. In both cases, system instability commonly results.
A virus, however, replicates itself: it spreads copies of itself to other computers if it can. Spyware generally does not self-replicate. Whereas a virus relies on users with poor security habits in order to spread, and spreads so far as possible in an unobtrusive way (in order to avoid detection and removal), spyware usually relies on persuading ignorant or credulous users to download and install it by offering some kind of bait. One typical spyware program targeted at children, for example, claims that:
A typical piece of spyware installs itself in such a way that it starts up every time the computer starts up (using CPU cycles and RAM, and reducing stability), and runs at all times, monitoring Internet usage and delivering targeted advertising to the affected system. It does not, however, attempt to replicate onto other computers — it functions as a parasiteA parasite is an organism that lives in or on the living tissue of a host organism at the expense of it. The biological interaction between the host and the parasite is called parasitism. Parasitism is a type of symbiosis, by one definition, although anot but not as an infectionInfection" is also the title of an episode of the television series Babylon 5; see Infection (Babylon 5). An infection is the detrimental colonization of a host organism by a foreign species. The colonizing organism interferes with the normal functioning. [1]
A virus generally aims to carry a payload of some kind. This may do some some damage to the user's system (such as, for example, deleting certain files), may make the machine vulnerable to further attacks by opening up a "back door", or may put the machine under the control of malicious third parties for the purposes of spamming or denial of service attacks. The virus will in almost every case also seek to replicate itself onto other computers. In other words, it functions not only as a parasite, but as an infection as well.
The damage caused by spyware, in contrast, usually occurs incidentally to the primary function of the program. Spyware generally does not damage the user's data files; indeed (apart from the intentional privacy invasion and bandwidth theft), the overwhelming majority of the harm inflicted by spyware comes about simply as an unintended by-product of the data-gathering or other primary purpose.
A virus does deliberate damage (to system software, or data, or both); spyware does accidental damage (usually only to the system software). In general, neither one can damage the computer hardware itself. Certain special circumstances aside, in the worst case the user will need to reformat the hard drive, reinstall the operating system and restore from backups. This can prove expensive in terms of repair costs, lost time and productivity. Instances have occurred of owners of badly spyware-infected systems purchasing entire new computers in the belief that an existing system "has become too slow."
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