Privacy-invasive software

Privacy-invasive software is a category of computer software that ignores users’ privacy and that is distributed with a specific intent, often of a commercial nature. Three typical examples of privacy-invasive software are adware, spyware and content hijacking programs.

In a digital setting, such as the Internet, there are a wide variety of privacy threats. These vary from the tracking of user activity (sites visited, items purchased etc.), to mass marketing based on the retrieval of personal information (spam offers and telemarketing calls are more common than ever), to the distribution of information on lethal technologies used for, e.g., acts of terror.

Today, software-based privacy-invasions occur in numerous aspects of Internet usage. Spyware programs set to collect and distribute user information secretly download and execute on users’ workstations. Adware displays advertisements and other commercial content often based upon personal information retrieved by spyware programs. System monitors record various actions on computer systems. Keyloggers record users’ keystrokes in order to monitor user behavior. Self-replicating malware downloads and spreads disorder in systems and networks. Data-harvesting software programmed to gather e-mail addresses have become conventional features of the Internet, which among other things results in that spam e-mail messages fill networks and computers with unsolicited commercial content. With those threats in mind, we hereby define privacy-invasive software as:

In this context, ignoring users’ right to be left alone means that the software is unsolicited and that it does not permit users to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent personally identifiable data is gathered, stored or processed by the software. Distributed means that it has entered the computer systems of users from (often unknown) servers placed on the Internet infrastructure. Often of a commercial nature means that the software (regardless of type or quality) is used as a tool in some sort of a commercial plan to gain revenues.

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Wikipedia