Software that assists a spammer. Such programs include harvesting emails randomly from websites, maintaining the lists and sending out the spam (unwanted advertisements). The spamware system may also falsify the identifying header information in the spam messages. The most malicious spamware is involved with hacking into and turning the computers of unsuspecting users into a botnet, so that thousands of computers can periodically mail an amount of spam small enough to go unnoticed. See
spam and
botnet.