With the massive penetration of computers all around the world, advertisers and marketers have developed many ingenious ways of deriving information about their potential customers. One of the many methods that they employ is known as Spyware, and this is a kind of software that gets installed in a computer without the user’s knowledge. Once it has been installed, the spyware regularly monitors the usage habits and preferences of the computer user and then sends this information across to some distant server. Needless to say, this is an illegal method of extracting information, but one that serves its purpose well. The nature of the websites that people visit, the frequency with which they visit them and other usage habits and statistics are relayed to the creator of the spyware, and this information is made use of to meet their specific needs. To put the blame simply on marketers and advertisers is not fair though, because there are several other nefarious parties that may be using spyware for the same purpose as well. READ MORE
