There are multitudes of types of malware and its objectives are very varied. This means that we find some malicious code that is only responsible for annoying us, while others focus on showing us advertising. But there are also more dangerous ones that steal our personal data from the computer and send it to the attackers themselves.
There are even some types of malware that completely block our computer and ask us for a ransom to use the PC again and access our data. In this specific case we are going to focus on a modality that has been quite widespread for decades and that continues to infect computers around the world effectively. Hence we should know the so-called spyware in order to avoid its arrival on our devices, always to the extent possible.
What is spyware
When we refer to this type of malware Specifically, we actually encounter a type of malicious software that infects our computer without us realizing it. From there, its main objective is collect personal and private information that we have stored or are going to store from then on.
One of the greatest dangers of spyware is that it acts silently, covering an increasing amount of content on our disk drives. Obviously, all this without us being aware of what it is doing. It embeds itself in the operating system itself and tries not to be detected by the security solution installed here. Therefore, it may happen that we have the computer infected by spyware for months without being aware.
In this way, the code is launched extracting all types of personal information such as access credentials, browsing history, screenshots, keystrokes, bank details, personal files and much more. On many occasions we allow this malware to enter the PC and install itself by accepting the terms and conditions of a program, for example.
And the fact is that a multitude of software that we download from the Internet that appears totally legitimate, includes malicious codes of this type that are installed on our computer. Hence precisely, as we have commented on many occasions, we should never trust the great offers or software gifts that we find online.
In short, we can say that spyware runs in the background and collects personal information of the user. Additionally, it monitors our local activities in order to carry out malicious actions later. And not only that, since another of its great dangers is that even if we detect it, completely eliminating it from the hard drive is not an easy task in most cases.
The most common types of this spyware
Depending on its nature, one of the objectives set by its creators, we can find different types of spyware. First of all, we must keep in mind that this is a malicious code model that has been with us for a long time and that has been improving and becoming more dangerous over the years.
Hence its current complexity, all in order to bypass the different restrictions and security measures integrated into our equipment. In addition, it must be taken into consideration that this model can affect both desktop computers and mobile devices without distinction. These are some of the most common types of spyware that can affect us.
Keyloggers. These codes are basically responsible for recording the keystrokes we make on the computer. This way they capture our activity by saving email conversations, access credentials, bank card numbers and more. All of this is sent to the remote servers of the attackers.
Infostealers. As their name suggests, they are responsible for stealing users’ personal data. Say that they are capable of analyzing a computer, searching for all types of data such as passwords, email addresses, documents, etc.
Banking. This other format focuses on achieving the access credentials to our banks and all kinds of data related to all of this. They make use of browser vulnerabilities to modify websites and change their content to deceive us.
How to avoid the arrival of spyware
We have already told you before that we should avoid overly attractive offers or gifts of normally paid software. These titles usually integrate their own malware with these characteristics that is installed on our computer without us realizing it. It can also reach us through email through certain types of files that we put into operation believing that they are totally reliable.
Hence, we should always download software from the official pages of its developers and be wary of unknown email addresses. Normally, the arrival of spyware It requires some actions on the part of the user, so we should take certain precautions to avoid the arrival of this specific malicious code.