Adware | Prevention, Detection, and Removal.

It’s a human tendency to want to know what others are doing or what they are up to, and depending on the scenario, it can be classified as harmless intend, standard business practice, harsh necessity, or an invasion of privacy. Adware can be the least offensive subset of malware, though still quite intrusive, annoying, and sometimes disruptive as they lead other malware to invade the computer.

What is Adware?

Adware is a type of malicious program (or a kind of malware) that quietly collects information about you, such as sites you visit, input keywords, browsing the history, browser add-ons and search results, while at the same time feeding you ads, and it does all of this without asking for your consent. This stolen information is again used to show advertisements but much refined based on the user. If a program or software consents you about displaying ads, that program cannot be considered as an adware. 

As per Wikipedia, 

"Adware is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during the installation process." 

What does Adware do?

Adware can be much more complex than we think, the adware can perform these tasks:

• Endless Pop-ups.
• Data breach (passwords and bank details).
• Spying.
• Man-in-the-middle attacks.
• Deteriorating the PC’s performance.
• Consume space.

Where do they come from?

As far as the spread of the adware is concerned, we can categorize it in two broad segments. The first one being the cybercriminals who crave for money and another being the companies that use unethical business practices.

Why they do what they do?

Ads can be the easiest source on which they can make money online so, cybercriminals use this tool to gain money. Another motive can be to extract potential information through a user’s browsing data, this can include bank details, passwords, etc. Adware can also be used to study the online browsing scenario and gather data unethically.

How to identify an adware infection?

You can know if you are under adware infection if you are experiencing these :

• Ads within the software.
• Pop-up ads on the desktop.
• Unintended browser windows showing up.
• New toolbar.
• New browser homepage and bookmarks.
• Change in search engine.
• Performance issues.
• Unusual redirects.

You can also check if your PC is infected with malware. 

How to remove adware?

Adware can be bundled with the freeware on the internet
most of them do ask if you want to install a browser toolbar or some type of program during the installation phase. This adware can be removed if we remove the bundled software, to do go to Control Panel > Uninstall a program > Select program you wish to uninstall.
Adware can also come through the browser's add-ons or extension, you can get rid of them by simply removing the suspicious add-on or extension which you can usually under browser settings.
Adware can also change the browser policies which in turn redirects the internet traffic over ad servers. You can remove those by using RegistyEdit
Go open registry go to start > type Regedit 
Now delete these two :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Google
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google
You can also check the startup pages of the browser if multiple windows or tabs open up full of ads. Also, you can go through the search engine settings of the browser
If this doesn't help your PC might be infected by any advanced adware created by any cybercriminal/hacker. In this case, manual operations don't work efficiently my suggestion would be going for a free adware removal tool. Here are some if you want to get rid of those annoying adware

• Zemana AntiMalware
• HitmanPro
• Malwarebytes AdwCleaner
• Adware Removal Tool by TSA

Remove unwanted ads, pop-ups & malware

How to prevent an adware infection?

• Avoid suspicious websites.
• Don’t believe any ads and pop-ups that claim to have found a malware infection on your PC.
• Scan suspicious links or files in Virus Total.
• Think twice before immediately downloading and installing any new software—especially freeware
• Download a quality cybersecurity software for your PC
• Don’t click any links or download attachments from suspicious emails.
• Don’t click on any online ads you might see.
  

  I hope I fulfilled your curiosity about this topic and if you are facing some issues regarding the same feel free to comment down I will try my best to respond as soon as possible.