Difference between Spyware and Viruses
Many users mistakenly confuse Spyware and Viruses as being the same thing. In fact Spyware and Viruses are two completely different forms of malware that can affect your computer. Unlike a computer virus, Spyware is very hard to detect because it is often buried in your computer registry, files and running processes. Some other things that make spyware hard to detect is typically with a virus, it is associated with one running program, where spyware can be comprised of multiple programs.
Current Anti-Virus detection programs are just not fully capable of completly removing spyware because of the distinct differences between viruses and spyware. They are very good at detecting a virus signature but have a hard time at detecting signatures made up from multiple programs and registry entries. I personally hate to have multiple protection programs running on my computer, but I have to go with what works.
The next time you are on your computer, make sure you have a trusted anti-virus protection program and a trusted Spyware protection program such as Webroot Spy Sweeper. This will help to make sure you are protected against virus and spyware threats.
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June 16th, 2006 at 7:50 am
the difference bewteen viruses and spyware is that viruses reproduce and infect host programs while spyware collects data about you/your habits/etc for a remote 3rd party…
viruses can be just deeply hidden and just as buried in the registry as spyware, they can’t necessarily be associated with just one process (that really sounds more like a worm than a virus)… in fact, some viruses are also spyware - the two sets of malware overlap (all malware sets overlap)…
further, the only reason why anti-spyware apps are often better at removing spyware than anti-virus apps are is because the many of the anti-virus vendors haven’t gotten their butts in gear and started handling spyware in a thorough manner yet… right now many are still treating non-viral malware as an afterthought and thus not doing a very good job…