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As more and more Chinese people enjoy surfing the Internet, "greyware," or malicious software, is becoming an increasing concern.

To combat the problem, 16 of China's major websites and software companies, including Sohu, Sina, Rising, Netease and Tom, signed a Software Security Self-Discipline Agreement yesterday in Beijing.

One user affected by greyware is Feng Xiaoming, a college student in Shanghai, who said he had been tortured by a kind of nuisance software that sneaked into his computer and kept popping up advertisement windows.

This kind of torture could be a thing of the past as the web companies promised to prevent malicious software from being distributed on their websites, and software companies promised to produce safe products that contain no greyware.

"There has been a growth in greyware infections circulating through the web," said Zhang Jian, director of the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre.

Zhang said signs indicate most greyware is being produced by organizations rather than individuals.

"Greyware is somewhere in between normal software and a virus," and is therefore in a "grey" area, said Shi Yu, an engineer with Rising, a Beijing-based anti-virus software company. "The name covers several types of nuisance software, such as adware, spyware, trackware and malicious shareware.

"It is usually downloaded to users' computers secretly and cannot easily be uninstalled."