A new report suggests that spyware and adware may be on the decline. The study shows that, while the cases of adware and spyware grew rapidly in the first half of the year, it's been much slower since then, and even showed a slight decline in the third quarter. It seems likely, though, that this is a temporary decline. Companies have finally realized that adware and spyware were serious problems causing serious problems and so they started fighting back for the first time. While that's helped slow down the rise of the simplest forms of spyware and adware, it just means that the creators are likely to be regrouping and coming up with even more insidious ways of attacking computers.