Malware types and their impact

As we had discussed earlier, malware is a malicious software that comes in a variety of names. Some of the names that it has acquired over a period of time include scamware, scareware, spamware, spyware, and so on.

Malware is all that and more. Let's take a look at the different types of malware and their impact.

Adware

Adware, as the name suggests, is an advertising-supported malware that affects your computer with the objective of serving up advertisements. This is quite a money earner for the author as they get paid based on the number of advertisements they serve up. Adware is designed to be persistent and may not be easy to remove by simply uninstalling it. Adware can be annoying at the least and it can also be part of a blended threat, as shown in the following image:

Adware reaches a victim by either downloading a supposedly useful software or visiting a site designed to affect the browser, operating system, or both.

Spyware

Spyware is a malicious software...