A recent report that labeled comScore's traffic monitoring application "spyware" used - as do many academics, non-profits and companies that benefit from embellished figures - a fairly inclusive definition of spyware. The comScore monitoring application gets downloaded by people seeking to use its web acceleration features - much like adware provides software services in return for ad exposures. CNET covers the semantic debate that threatened to paint comScore as a black hat company. Different companies are handling the definitions quite diversely. Some, like Earthlink, even count tracking cookies as instances of spyware.
