Anti-Adware

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What Does Anti-Adware Mean?

Anti-adware is a software utility that scans and removes bothersome and malicious adware, tracking cookies, Trojans, malware, spyware and keyloggers from an infected computer.

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It can be difficult for antivirus software to detect these kinds of unwanted applications. As a result, users often use anti-adware applications together with anti-virus software to safeguard their systems from unwanted attacks.

As the lines between adware and spyware become increasingly blurred, the uses for anti-adware continue to increase. Because of the volume of adware on the Internet, anti-adware can be beneficial for computer security purposes . Anti-adware should not to be used in lieu of anti-virus programs, but rather along with them.

Anti-adware may also be known as anti-spyware.

Techopedia Explains Anti-Adware

Adware is typically an unsolicited advertisement. Many types of adware and malware reconfigure the registry and browser settings to enable browser hijacking, which sends users to undesired websites. An efficient anti-adware utility is effective against almost all malicious applications on the Internet, but is most effective against adware.

If a computer user experiences the following symptoms, the computer may be infected with adware:

  • Computer appears to be slow, with various applications taking too much time to load
  • Constant appearance of pop-ups and ads that the user did not click
  • Appearance of much more spam, particularly the arrival of specially-targeted ads to the user’s computer

Fortunately, anti-adware tracks these malicious adware applications and deletes them from users’ computers. Anti-adware prevents pop-up adware and other malicious attacks embedded within adware.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.