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Potentially Unwanted Programs
A potentially unwanted program (PUP) or potentially unwanted application (PUA) is software that a user may perceive as unwanted or unnecessary. It is used as a subjective tagging criterion by security and parental control products. Such software may use an implementation that can compromise privacy or weaken the computer's security. Companies often bundle a wanted program download with a wrapper application and may offer to install an unwanted application, and in some cases without providing a clear opt-out method. Antivirus companies define the software bundled as potentially unwanted programs which can include software that displays intrusive advertising (adware), or tracks the user's Internet usage to sell information to advertisers (spyware), injects its own advertising into web pages that a user looks at, or uses premium SMS services to rack up charges for the user. A growing number of open-source software projects have expressed dismay at third-party websites wrapping their do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adware
Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue by automatically displaying Online advertising, online advertisements in the user interface or on a screen presented during the installation process. The software may generate two types of revenue: one is for the display of the advertisement and another on a "pay-per-click" basis, if the user clicks on the advertisement. Some advertisements also act as spyware,FTC Report (2005). collecting and reporting data about the user, to be sold or used for targeted advertising or Profiling (information science), user profiling. The software may implement advertisements in a variety of ways, including a static box display, a banner display, a full screen, a video, a pop-up ad or in some other form. All forms of advertising carry Criticism of advertising, health, ethical, privacy and security risks for users. The 2003 ''Microsoft Encyclopedia of Security'' and some other sources use th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lavasoft
Adaware, previously known as Lavasoft, is a software development company that produces spyware and malware detection software, including Adaware. It operates as a subsidiary of Avanquest, a division of Claranova. Adaware's headquarters are in Montreal, Canada, having previously been located in Gothenburg, Sweden since 2002. Nicolas Stark and Ann-Christine Åkerlund established the company in Germany in 1999 with its flagship Adaware antivirus product. In 2011, Adaware was acquired by the Solaria Fund, a private equity fund front for entrepreneurs Daniel Assouline and Michael Dadoun, who have been accused of selling software that is available free, including Adaware antivirus prior to acquiring the company itself. Adaware antivirus An anti-spyware and anti-virus software program, Adaware Antivirus, according to its developer, supposedly detects and removes malware, spyware and adware, computer viruses, dialers, Trojans, bots, rootkits, data miners, parasites, browser hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emsisoft Ltd
Emsisoft Ltd. (est. 2003) is a New Zealand-based anti-virus software distributed company. They are notable for decrypting ransomware attacks to restore data. History Emsisoft is an anti-malware and cybersecurity software and consulting company founded in Austria in 2003 by Christian Mairoll. The company makes anti-malware software and decryption tools used by companies and individuals to help them recover computer files encrypted in ransomware attacks. It also tracks and generates studies on ransomware attacks. Mairoll, who is CEO, relocated to rural New Zealand in 2014, moving Emsisoft’s headquarters to the country, while its employees across Europe, Asia and the United States remained remote. In 2019, Emsisoft donated decryption tools to Europol's ''No More Ransom'' project. The company’s decryption tools were also used to help resolve the Kaseya VSA ransomware attack, DarkSide and BlackMatter ransomware attacks against dozens of companies across the U.S., Europe an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keygens
A key generator (keygen) is a computer program that generates a product licensing key, such as a serial number, necessary to activate for use of a software application. Keygens may be legitimately distributed by software manufacturers for licensing software in commercial environments where software has been licensed in bulk for an entire site or enterprise, or they may be developed and distributed illegitimately in circumstances of copyright infringement or software piracy. Illegitimate key generators are typically programmed and distributed by software crackers in the warez scene. These keygens often play music (taking from the tradition of cracktros), which may include the genres dubstep, chiptunes, sampled loops or anything that the programmer desires. Chiptunes are often preferred due to their small size. Keygens can have artistic user interfaces or kept simple and display only a cracking group or cracker's logo. Software licensing A software license is a legal instrum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
QBittorrent
qBittorrent is a cross-platform free and open-source BitTorrent client written in native application, native C++. It relies on Boost (C++ libraries), Boost, OpenSSL, zlib, Qt (software), Qt 6 toolkit and the libtorrent-rasterbar library (for the torrent back-end), with an optional search engine written in Python (programming language), Python. History qBittorrent was originally developed in March 2006 by Christophe Dumez from the Université de technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard, University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM). It is currently developed by contributors worldwide and is funded through donations, led by Sledgehammer999 from Greece, who became project maintainer in June 2013. Along with the 4.0.0 release a new logo for the project was unveiled. In February 2023, a security vulnerability affecting versions 4.5.0 and 4.5.1 was discovered in the Web UI running on Windows systems. This vulnerability enabled unauthenticated access to all files on the host ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peer-to-peer File Sharing
Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program that searches for other connected computers on a P2P network to locate the desired content. The nodes (peers) of such networks are end-user computers and distribution servers (not required). The early days of file-sharing were done predominantly by client-server transfers from web pages, FTP and IRC before Napster popularised a Windows application that allowed users to both upload and download with a freemium style service. Record companies and artists called for its shutdown and FBI raids followed. Napster had been incredibly popular at its peak, spawning a grass-roots movement following from the mixtape scene of the 80's and left a significant gap in music availability with its followers. After much discussion on forums and in chat rooms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Premium SMS
Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, typically transmitted over cellular networks. Developed as part of the GSM standards, and based on the Signalling System No. 7, SS7 signalling protocol, SMS rolled out on digital cellular networks starting in 1993 and was originally intended for customers to receive alerts from their Mobile network operator, carrier/operator. The service allows users to send and receive text messages of up to 160 characters, originally to and from GSM phones and later also Code-division multiple access, CDMA and Digital AMPS; it has since been defined and supported on newer networks, including present-day 5G ones. Using SMS gateways, messages can be transmitted over the Internet through an Short Message service center, SMSC, allowing communication to compute ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Android (operating System)
Android is an operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen-based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computer, tablets. Android has historically been developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance, but its most widely used version is primarily developed by Google. First released in 2008, Android is the world's Usage share of operating systems, most widely used operating system; the latest version, released on June 10, 2025, is Android 16. At its core, the operating system is known as the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and is free and open-source software (FOSS) primarily licensed under the Apache License. However, most devices run the proprietary software, proprietary Android version developed by Google, which ships with additional proprietary closed-source software pre-installed, most notably Google Mobile Services (GMS), which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operating System
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of Scheduling (computing), processor time, mass storage, peripherals, and other resources. For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or is interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computerfrom cellular phones and video game consoles to web servers and supercomputers. , Android (operating system), Android is the most popular operating system with a 46% market share, followed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Security Vulnerability
Vulnerabilities are flaws or weaknesses in a system's design, implementation, or management that can be exploited by a malicious actor to compromise its security. Despite a system administrator's best efforts to achieve complete correctness, virtually all hardware and software contain bugs where the system does not behave as expected. If the bug could enable an attacker to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of system resources, it can be considered a vulnerability. Insecure software development practices as well as design factors such as complexity can increase the burden of vulnerabilities. Vulnerability management is a process that includes identifying systems and prioritizing which are most important, scanning for vulnerabilities, and taking action to secure the system. Vulnerability management typically is a combination of remediation, mitigation, and acceptance. Vulnerabilities can be scored for severity according to the Common Vulnerability Scoring ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dial-up Internet Access
Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telephone line which could be connected using an RJ-11 connector. Dial-up connections use modems to decode audio signals into data to send to a Router (computing), router or computer, and to encode signals from the latter two devices to send to another modem at the ISP. Dial-up Internet reached its peak popularity during the dot-com bubble with the likes of ISPs such as Sprint Corporation, Sprint, EarthLink, MSN Dial-up, NetZero, Prodigy (online service), Prodigy, and America Online (more commonly known as AOL). This was in large part because broadband Internet did not become widely used until well into the 2000s. Since then, most dial-up access has been replaced by broadband. History In 1979, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis (computing), Jim Ellis, g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
