[wtracy]

A tangent:

There's this fascinating (to me, anyway) line between "viruses" (including worms, Trojans, and similar malware) that antivirus programs will tackle, and adware/spyware that they usually don't.

The difference between the two is whether it not there's a corporation publicly taking credit for the program and suing antivirus companies for defamation over calling it a "virus".

Adware/spyware is limited in distribution methods and payload types by the letter of the law, but otherwise the two classes are functionally identical.