Spyware booming?

The deluge of spyware festering on consumer and corporate PCs will help to spark a boom in spending on security software. Spyware, also known as adware or malware, is infecting millions of computers with multiple purposes: stealing personal information, enabling identity theft, tracking users' online activity, and selling the information back to anyone willing to pay. At the moment anti-spyware will increasingly become part of antivirus vendors' offerings. Spyware is very different from viruses however, and is much more difficult to eliminate because it establishes itself in a computer's registry. In my opinion the antivirus vendors will take the lead in tackling spyware very shortly.