Let's take a moment to make an inventory of what programs we are running now in our computers. Chances are, we have the Adobe Reader, an AOL or Yahoo Messenger, web-hosting programs, free email clients, some widgets, and a few free programs here and there. These are some of the many software applications we installed and what we all do not know offhand is that we also download adware completely free when we downloaded and installed them.

Surprised? You shouldn't be, and you shouldn't feel cheated or angered too. Why? These are harmless - they only want to display some ads related to you so the developers of your favorite programs can go on developing other applications you may want to download too later on.

When we download adware completely free with the applications we choose to install, we help the software developers recover some costs for software development, and for future upgrades. These adwares are also a way for them to maintain and sustain the freebies or sharewares they offer users.

Yes, there are adwares that are considered really harmful since they act like the malwares, spywares, or viruses. But this type of adware that we're talking to here is that program, which keeps track of your surfing habits so it can pull the right ads to display and possibly offer you products or services that you may be interested in.

The term adware may have a negative implication because of the privacy invasion. The popping of advertisements here and there too, can disturb us during work or play so we find ways to get rid of them.

Many spyware programs carry advertisements with them. These ads pop on a regular basis, say one for every minute, or whenever the user opens a certain application, or browser window. Others display ads when a specific website is visited. These are all attractive to advertisers so developers make the most of them.

Advertisements are in the form of banner ads, pop ups, or flickering banners which appear because you did download adware completely free when you installed a nice program.

There are several programs that can detect these programs and remove them from the system. Some of these clean up programs can clear both adware and spyware. But make sure you're getting the right ones. The more popular ones are Ad-Aware and Spybot. These two can detect spyware but not viruses but there antivirus software applications that can do more.

Adwares have distinct fingerprints in your computer system in the form of registry entries, files, folders, or memory processes that an anti-spyware can detect.

So, the next time you go surfing with the intention to find the latest upgrades for any existing widget, messenger or email client you have, remember that aside from the actual programs that are offered for free, there are freebies attached to these programs in the form of advertising-supported software.

If you can tolerate having the ads popping on your screen then you can always download adware completely free together with the latest upgrades of your favorite widget and utilities.