A form of malware that monitors user activities and reports them to an external their party. Spyware can be legitimate in that it is operated by an advertising and marketing agency for the purpose of gathering customer demographics. However, spyware can also be operated by attackers using the data gathering tool to steal an identity or learn enough about a victim to harm them in other ways.
Spyware describes software with malicious behavior that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send such information to another entity in a way that harms the user; for example by violating their privacy or endangering their device's security. This behavior may be present in malware as well as in legitimate software. Websites may also engage in spyware behaviors like web tracking. Hardware devices may also be affected. Spyware is frequently associated with advertising and involves many of the same issues. Because these behaviors are so common, and can have non-harmful uses, providing a precise definition of spyware is a difficult task.
