What about Spyware

Spyware is defined loosely as any program that secretly gathers information about you and or your computer use through your Internet connection. Typically, a Spyware program gathers information about you by monitoring your computing activities and then transmits it across the Internet to a central server for onward distribution to interested parties for advertising purposes. These programs can also download files, run other programs in the background, and change your system settings.In addition to violating your privacy and potentially damaging your system, Spyware can slow your computer down by stealing processing time from the CPU. Even though the name may indicate so, Spyware is not an illegal type of software in any way as yet. However there are certain issues that a privacy oriented user may object to and therefore prefer not to use the product.Another potential problem is that many are poorly written, may contain programming bugs and errors and can cause problems with the normal operation of your computer. One of the causes of your web browser hanging and crashing frequently with those "General Protection Faults" may be due to one of those badly written Spyware programs interfering with its normal operation.