What is spyware? What is adware? You’ve probably heard of them because everyone that gets online is either bombarded with information about the products that can help to protect against these two things or get so much spam that they’ve had to remove it from their system.Spyware and adware are two separate things but can be lumped together for one reason. That is that they are merciless in what they can do to your computer and to you.They risk your sanity with pop up ads.