said by The FTC:

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According to the Federal Trade Commission Act and the FTC's Unfairness Policy Statement, an ad or business practice is unfair if:

•it causes or is likely to cause substantial consumer injury which a consumer could not reasonably avoid; and•it is not outweighed by the benefit to consumers.

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•Spyware causes actual harm. Its installation could possibly result in the theft of sensitive information, such as business trade secrets, depending on what information the program reports. It also decreases system performance and can present advertisements of questionable taste (i.e. marketing adult products to minors) on unrelated websites. Furthermore, since the average consumer is not willing to read a EULA, they are unable to discern what is going on and are thus unable to avoid it. For evidence that people do not know what is going on, see DSLR's Security forum.•Does spyware benefit consumers? While it certainly does provide a source of revenue for apps that would otherwise be distributed for a fee, the potential hazards of spyware probably outweigh this advantage. In addition, spyware can remain long after its "parent" programs have been uninstalled, which means that people continue to pay for something they do not use. Users will end up "paying" much more (consider the value of the information obtained and the ad revenues from what is presented) for spyware apps than if they purchased an equivalent application.