Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Software that secretly gathers information about a person or organization.
- noun Any malicious software that is designed to take partial or full control of a computer's operation without the knowledge of its user.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Internet
programs that surreptitiouslymonitor and report the actions of a computer user.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun computer software that obtains information from a user's computer without the user's knowledge or consent
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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- Consumer from California The term spyware may be amorphous, but there is no doubt that its negative impact is real.
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For them, slowdowns are common, viruses are a nuisance, and spyware is rampant.
Clean Up And Revive Your Bloated, Sluggish Mac | Lifehacker Australia 2009
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I have never actually seen a virus from the web on any of my pc's, spyware is another story.
Clean Up And Revive Your Bloated, Sluggish Mac | Lifehacker Australia 2009
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And, since they are dedicated devices, the possibility of getting a virus, or spyware, is about the same as when you hook your Xbox 360 or PS3 to your broadband connection.
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Assume that all other sites contain spyware or malicious code which may not be directly trusted.
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Is it your belief that Microsoft purposefully created software that allowed for the ease with which spyware is deployed or that it did so quite by accident (nonetheless bearing the blame for the proliferation this plague)?
Spyware defined 2005
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CNET News – Why they say spyware is good for you, November 7, 2005
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Spyware defined p2p news/p2pnet: Broadly speaking, spyware is software as affecting one or more of these areas:
Spyware defined 2005
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Recently the popular peer-to-peer application Shareaza has been promoted in spyware form.
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While the existence of spyware is now something many Internet users have grown to expect, it is hard to imagine the shock when you realise that a community-built program that you are a part of has been hijacked.
Comments
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