Is adware the same as a virus?Īdware is a type of malware, but it’s significantly different than a computer virus. Slowing down your device: Loading and running advertisements draws processing power away from what you want to do, which slows down your device’s performance.Įating up your data: Just like there’s a data cost when you download a picture or video, downloading advertisements also eats at your monthly mobile data allowance.

Man-in-the-middle attacks: Adware like Superfish operate by redirecting all of your traffic through their system so they can display advertisements, but they do this even over what should be protected connections - like when you connect to your online bank accounts. Spying: With one foot in the spyware family, this kind of adware tracks your activities both online and off to figure out what kind of advertisements it should show you. Sometimes an endless stream of ads will pop up at once, while at other times closing one only opens the next like a bad game of whack-a-mole.

Infinite pop-ups: This is classic adware. Some of the more common ways adware acts on computers are: As advertisements become more complex, so does adware.

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