Antivirus Glossary of Terms

Many products claim to detect and remove malware. But what is antivirus software and is it really necessary?

Malvertising is malicious advertising that contains active scripts designed to download malware or force unwanted content onto your computer. Here's how to block it.

Spamdexing is a method used to inflate the search engine rankings of a particular page, generally for malicious or unethical purposes.

Email attachments are a common form on infection. Find out what threat these Internet worms pose, disguised as innocent attachments.

RATs, or Remote Access Trojans, provide a "backdoor" into the system through which the unscrupulous hacker can snoop into your system - even running other malicious code if s/he chooses.

Adobe Flash cookies work through the ubiquitous Adobe Flash and enables any of Adobe's partners to set global cookies that are maintained on Adobe's servers instead of your own computer. The offsite storage means you really aren't deleting cookies when you clear your local cache.

Though nearly all reputable scanning vendors spell it antivirus, there's no real consensus on the proper name. Some users (and vendors) may spell...