Virus - Software program capable of reproducing itself and is usually capable of causing great harm to files or other programs on the same computer; "a true virus cannot spread to another computer without the human assistance. Spyware - Computer software that obtains information from a user's computer without the user's knowledge or consent.
Adware - A software application that includes adverts, which are displayed while the software is running. Developers use adware as a source of income and to keep the costs of the software down (usually making it free). Some adware program can include spyware.
Trojan - A program that appears desirable but actually contains something harmfu;; "the contents of a trojan can be a virus or a worm"; "when he downloaded the free game it turned out to be a trojan horse"
Keylogger - These are programs that run in the background on your computer and are capable of recording every keystroke you make on your keyboard. Keyloggers can steal which personal details and passwords that can later be retrieved by a third party.
Worm - A software program capable of reproducing itself that can spread from one computer to the next over a netwrok; "worms take advantage of automatic file sending and receiving features found on manhy computers".
Cookies - Cookies are small files which are stored on a user's computer. They are designed to hold a modest amount of data specific to a particular client and website, and can be accessed either by the web server or the client computer. This allows the server to deliver a page tailored to a particular user, or the page itself can contain some script which is aware of the data in the cookie and so is able to carry information from one visit to the website (or related site) to the next.

	Created by Dannii Stevenson about 11 years ago

GCSE Evernote notes Note on Malware, created by Dannii Stevenson on 16/05/2013.