The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had used existing fair trade laws in asking a federal court to shut down some of the leading distributors of malicious “spyware” or “adware” software. This type of malicious software may be lumped with viruses, worms, and spam, and is all referred to as “malware” – short for malicious software. What are spyware and adware software? Spyware and adware are software that is installed on your computer, generally without your knowledge, that m.