what is spyware and web bug cams

i no what hardware and software is but what is spyware and web bugs cams things

In short, spyware is software that gets installed with or without your knowledge on your computer and reports your activity to the installer, either for commercial purposes or, in some cases, for law enforcement purposes (such as the FBI using keyloggers).

Web bug cams ... hmm ... depends on what you mean here

Web cams are "video cameras" used to film you so that you can have a video conference through your internet connection. Basically, they film you and digitize the image which can then be stored or sent elsewhere

Web bugs: software bugs related to web applications?

Anyway, if you could be a little more specific on "web bug cams" you will get a better answer.

Cheers,

BrainStop

so spyware like trojans hmm?

A web bug is a small graphic (can be as small as 1x1 pixel) that can be embedded in a web page and used to track your browsing activity. Usually web bugs are transparent. You would never know they're on the page. If you're concerned about spyware I suggest you search www.google.com and put in the terms "spyware" and "web bug". You should find plenty to read. Two useful programs to deal with spyware, "Ad-Aware" and "SpyBlocker." You can find a place to download them with Google too. :cool:

The other day I used Ad-Aware .... 73 spyware programs found... blah. Most of them came installed with my windows ... go figure

Spyware:
In general, spyware is any technology that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge. On the Internet, spyware is programming that is put in someone's computer to secretly gather information about the user and relay it to advertisers or other interested parties. Spyware can get in a computer as a software virus or as the result of installing a new program. Data collecting programs that are installed with the user's knowledge are not, properly speaking, spyware, if the user fully understands what data is being collected and with whom it is being shared.
The cookie is a well-known mechanism for storing information about an Internet user on their own computer. However, the existence of cookies and their use is generally not concealed from users, who can also disallow access to cookie information. Nevertheless, to the extent that a Web site stores information about you in a cookie that you don't know about, the cookie mechanism could be considered a form of spyware. DoubleClick, a leading banner ad serving company, changed its plans to combine cookie information with database information from other sources to target ad campaigns directly to individuals without their permission. DoubleClick's current policy is not to collect "personally-identifiable" information about a user without their explicit permission or "opt-in."

Aureate Media, which distributes free software on the Web in exchange for the right to gather user information, is another company that has been criticized for not plainly indicating what data it gathers and for making it difficult to remove its programming.

Spyware is part of an overall public concern about privacy on the Internet.

Web bug

A Web bug is a file object, usually a graphic image such as a transparent one pixel-by-one pixel GIF, that is placed on a Web page or in an e-mail message to monitor user behavior, functioning as a kind of spyware. Unlike a cookie, which can be accepted or declined by a browser user, a Web bug arrives as just another GIF on the Web page. A Web bug is typically invisible to the user because it is transparent (matches the color of the page background) and takes up only a tiny amount of space. It can usually only be detected if the user looks at the source version of the page to find a an IMG tag that loads from a different Web server than the rest of the page.
Although proponents of Internet privacy object to the use of Web bugs in general, they also concede that Web bugs can be put to positive use, for example to track copyright violations on the Web.

According to Richard M. Smith, a Web bug can gather the following statistics:

The IP address of the computer that fetched the Web bug
The URL of the page that the Web bug is located on
The URL of the Web bug image
The time the Web bug was viewed
The type of browser that fetched the Web bug image
A previously set cookie value

web bugs can and usually do set a third party cookie, which can be used to get a computer id and other personal info, effectively profileing you.

the ligitimate reasons for loading images (ads/banners) from a server other than the page your viewing are: they are not taking up space on the web hosts server, they can be changed by the owners of the ads without bothering the hosts admin, and an accurate record can be kept of the number of times the ad has been seen.

There is no good reason why a third party cookie should be set.

spammers use web bugs to validate e-mail addresses, which is why its best to delete spam and not open it.

when an image, no matter how small, is called from a server, that server can request a login, if a computer is set to log in automatically, the victims computer is sending out a user name and password to this unknown server. this is a not the norm, and only practiced by malicious sites.

if your concerned about web bugs, get bugnosis from the privacy foundation, its free and will most likly be an enlightening experiance.

thanks to all of you for telling me what they mean and here i can get the software to block and search for spyware on my computer thanks again