Scumware is a generic term that encompasses a range of computer software that is designed and used to either harvest specific information from user machines for the purpose of marketing, or to display advertising messages and banners either within existing Web pages, or in Pop up boxes. These type of applications are legitimate, however the methods by which they are installed to your machine are often questionable, and on occasion they will be installed without your knowledge.

The important thing to remember with this type of software is that it was installed with ‘Explicit Permission’ - that is you agreed to allow it to be installed on your computer, albeit often unwittingly.

Some of the types of Scumware include:

Adware:

This is normally a program or utility that displays an advertisement or banner promoting a service that (normally) can be found on the Internet. Nowadays it is not unusual to download free versions of software on the proviso that you view banners or advertisements in the content of the program. This gives you an opportunity to evaluate the software at no cost, or as an alternative you can download a registered version of the utility that does not have the advertising.

Normally this type of program is totally open and honest about its purpose; (equally it is hard not to see the adverts!) and you are advised of the content when first installing.

This type of package is not normally malicious, and un-installation of the original utility often removes the advertising modules.

Norman Virus Control does not always detect this type of software because it is often installed with explicit permission (intentionally)

Spyware

These are advertising components that are installed by some "shareware" products the purpose of these products is to monitor and collect personal information from your computer ? This has a variety of impacts on both you and your computer, including:

• Monitoring and reporting your browsing preferences.
• Injecting aggressive commercials and on occasion re-directing you to new sites.
• Embedding banners that stay with you as you browse from site to site.
• Hiding the locations of new sites (you always see the site embedded in the original advertising) this also means that if you bookmark a site for future reference you have to open the host site in order to access your chosen site.
• Installing lots of unnecessary (and on occasion embarrassing or upsetting) bookmarks in your favorite page, and re-setting your home page.
• Using valuable bandwidth to upload personal information to the Spy servers

Additionally, as some of these packages are badly written and leave ports open they can leave your computer open to a variety of exploits including remote administration of your machine.

This can lead to loss of personal and private data including bank details, and equally as bad this can lead to your machine being used for Deliberate denial of Service attacks (dDOS) on other machines resulting in very unhappy ISP’s and possible termination of accounts.

Luckily a lot of Spyware manufacturers have Web sites, and if you dig deep enough you may find information on the types of data they harvest, and what they do with it. If you are even luckier they may even have information on uninstalling the software. Again Norman Virus Control does not always detect this type of software because it is not actually a virus. This where Norman Ad-Aware is needed