How Our Downloading Habit Has Led Us into a Blind Alley of Adware

Have you recently downloaded smart software that was too good to be free? The silicon legend says that the crack to which you just leased some space on your computer could potentially cost you more that you thought it saved you. And cost you, not just financially, but also compromise your valuable and private data. Most of these download bundles come with inherent perils such as adware, backdoors as well as infostealers and even ransomware.

The threats are not limited to your computers. A recent study endorsed by McAfee “Towards Automated App Collusion Detection” reads that nearly 85% of all the apps on the Google Play Store interact with each other when installed on an Android phone, either through explicit (11.3%) or implicit (73.1%). This intercommunication between apps exposes android devices to threats, in a collaborative fashion, and in future will lead to plenty of such colluding sets. In June 2016, Trend Micro discovered a malware called "Godless" which was capable of infecting up to 90% of devces.

Most of the times, the treats come with capabilities to inject ads which deviate your attention while the infectious crawlers wrap up their business. Interestingly, adware which were believed to just display annoying ads have become scapegoats for much severe threats. These aggressively pitched ads, which were earlier believed to have just held the mast for unwanted marketing, have come up as, or rather evolved into, software that don’t just flaunt some unwanted ads, but also take a deep gaze into everything stored on your machine. As web is the most consumed host of media these days, hijacking adware do not shy away from tapping into your data lines.

These adware make use of users’ ignorance and blind faith in companies such as anti-virus makers themselves. A startling number of off-store anti-virus patches or cracks come laced with these adware – capable of even remotely hawking or controlling your system. Browser plugins such as those for Mozilla or Chrome are most of the exploitative batch. Once injected, these tend to modify the codes of sites visited by users to pitch in undesired advertisement and secretly tracking your data, and even suggesting you to install fake anti-malware software. Consequences? Most of those who are technologically conscious end up trading their private data for beans.

These malicious injectors will continue to track data on every webpage which runs in a browser, local or online files, on HTTP or even HTTPS – you’re virtually insecure everywhere and its (mostly) inevitable. These further expose your private data to other hackers, with their fishing hooks down the online streams. Since there is No Encryption at play, stealing private data of users from these illicit repositories makes it immensely easy for hackers. Further, they store your data and its location on your network or machine for a long duration, such that exploitation of data is only a sleight of hand. These storages of exfiltrated information are often used in collaboration by huge masses of hackers.

We have arrived in 2017, over 20 years since the first noted malware infected PCs and still have limited resolutions, especially in the area consumer technology. Mobile devices and IoT are significantly rising and face threat from these malicious programs, especially attributed to their naivety in terms of security. While one philosophy calls for using alternative, safe Operating Systems such as the Free-for-all Linux or the Paid-for-all Macintosh (iOS in mobile devices), Windows has deep penetrated our personal computing because of the wide range of software available for free. In a foully infected digital space, we must either spend extensively on hardware protection systems like physical firewalls, or bring about stringent changes in our idea of “free” computing.