Hmmm, been dragging my feet about creating a thread to cover the lexicon. Noticed y'all done scooped my tongue-in-cheek plan.
Wish more people understood that just because an application phones home during installation does NOT make it spyware. There are legitimate reasons for it making a connection to the developer's servers. Too bad some people just yell fire in Stupid Comments Theatre and (incorrectly) use "-ware" words interchangeably or blame GAOTD for false positive error messages. Granted, there is overlap such as when adware is used as a vehicle to deliver the bad stuff (hah, a techie term if ever I've seen one) to exploit vulnerabilities.
BuBByCo, I agree wholeheartedly with your oily sentiments! There's a third component, destructive hacks called Malware. Basically speaking:
ADware seeks to separate you from your money, often with too-good-to-be-true offers only technically legal via fine print disclaimer;
SPYware as its name implies, seeks to surreptitiously plunder private data to be used for a criminal purpose;
MALware seeks to disrupt/damage computers, software, data and/or Internet and telco efficiency or even access. Recently read an estimate that 40% of computers are now unwitting bots for hacker chicanery. Wonder if that estimate was based on a Gallup survey using a PC to PC diagnostic on 2000 random machines?
My beef with adware is that it’s headed in the same direction as other forms in commercial broadcasts. Ad agencies automatically assume that the best way to capture eyeballs is to raise the intrusiveness bar. With radio and TV, that meant hiking the number of commercial breaks, shortening commercials to uninformative soundbites, and the truly OFFENSIVE stunt - cranking up the gain so that the transition from soft dialogue to commercial break wakes the dead. That can backfire. Caused me to stop listening to radio altogether, and HOLD my finger over the TV mute button. With the Internet, they've gone from simple ad banners to crafting java and flash code that adds motion, unwanted sound effects, expands ad size to hide content and pop up all over the screen from incidental mouseovers. I recognize and appreciate the need for ad-based web models, but when it INTRUDES on my tranquil space, it crosses a line. (like an inconsiderate neighbor's obnoxious barking dog) I now aggressively embrace all sorts of countermeasures (against ads... unfortunately, the gubmetn frowns on shooting neighbors even though it's an effective solution), but the intrusiveness trend is as relentless as the hackers’ attempts to break into PCs.