TABLE OF CONTENTS Over the past few years, you surely have not been able to pick up a newspaper, watch your local news, or read any news site on the Internet without hearing about how the bird flu has spread and how scientists fear that this virus could mutate. This is typically a natural phenomenon with viruses. But imagine how much damage can be done when a man-made malicious application is taken from humble beginnings to a much more destructive force.
In this chapter, we will discuss how the term spyware came to be, differentiate it from previous destructive code, such as viruses, and follow spyware s progression to its modern-day form.
A long, long time ago OK, it wasn t even 10 years ago. But in Internet years that is like 100. As maligned and often malicious as spyware is today, it evolved from a natural progression of events as companies tried to come to terms with using the Internet as a business tool and how to intelligently and efficiently leverage e-commerce as a part of doing business.
Companies have spent decades fine-tuning their understanding of the market and identifying (or shaping) what consumers want. Millions of dollars and countless man-hours of research have gone into psycho-analyzing the purchasing habits of consumers so that companies can invest their resources wisely on research and development, and can market their products with a reasonable chance for success. The Internet has forced them to retool and to find a way to...
