Spyware Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Spyware - Lab Report Example The sole identity that a person has during any online transfer is his password. In case the password to your bank account has been hacked by a smart hacker, after tracking the data from your computer system, he can transfer millions from your account into his account in just a few seconds. To your nightmare, it does not end here. He can sell the vital information, related to your company’s strategy and stored in your system, to the competitor and since the information has been leaked from your system, it will be only you who end up in a jail after losing all the money. Spywares are programmed to obtain the data stored on our computer, and surreptitiously transfer them to the designated computer systems. This data can then be used for any purpose the hacker likes and after that he can sell it at a suitable cost in the grey market. The extent of Spywares can be estimated from the fact that according to the data reported by Earthlink in mid-20041 itself, computers they scanned averaged 26 instances of Spywares per computer. The next question is how do these softwares get into our systems at the first place? The answer to this is they get through mostly with the help of freewares2. Some of the freewares that are available on the internet contain these Spywares as a package. These freewares even have a notification that a spyware will be installed onto the host computer in the fine prints. But, most people sign the licensing agreement without having a proper look at it. Whenever a user installs any such freeware on his machine, the Spywares keeps on transferring the data which, as per claim in these agreements, is used for the marketing information sought by the company who sell you this freeware. These companies claim to generally track the user behavior with the help of this monitoring activity in which the kind of websites visited, the frequency of visits, number of clicks etc. are collated by the