Being very active online, I am always worried of my pc being infected by dangerous programs. I just wanted to know the difference with a virus, malware, spyware, adware and internet worms. Also, on a related topic, I want to know the difference between an antivirus and web security? Is an antivirus limited compared to other software?
With virus, spyware, malware, adware, and worms, I don’t see any difference because they are all viruses that pose threat on a computer just differ in their types. An adware is a type of malware that when infects your computer, will show different pop-ups on your screen. The pop-up is normally displayed in the form of an advertisement that when clicked will lead you to a rogue website.
Virus and malware are the same. They just differ in the name they are called. A virus or a computer virus is a malware or a program code that infects and replicates itself by inserting its code to healthy programs, documents, and the boot sector of the computer. Before, only executables get infected.
But as technology advances and the information the virus authors want to collect broadens, documents like the ones created in Microsoft Office Word are also getting infected. Aside from infecting other files, a virus can also be transmitted as attachments to an email like when the attachment is downloaded. A virus can also travel by means of a CD or a diskette.
When you insert a CD or a diskette that contains infected files, it can transfer to your hard drive and infect any of your files. A spyware is any form of technology that assists in collecting information about an organization or a person without their knowledge.
