New adware companies are increasingly targeting Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social networking sites as a means of distribution. Adware is software that displays targeted advertisements when downloaded. It is available along with downloadable games, movies, music files, or software programs without being listed as part of the download. The application tracks the user's online behavior and serves up advertisements on the basis of such behavior after being installed in the system. Many of the existing adware distribution strategies deal exclusively with popular social networking sites, specifically Facebook and Twitter that rely on third-party content. Adware offerings appear masked as games, dating applications, videos, media players, and sponsored distributions for real open-source programs such as Mozilla Firefox and Open Office on Facebook.
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