Radiate: Founded in 1996, Radiate is the oldest of the major adware companies and takes a more dated approach, having bundled its Aureate ad-serving software with at least 250 shareware games and programs (Netvampire, Abe's MP3 Finder 4.0), a few well-known utilities (CuteFTP) and its own programs (ironically, Aureate SPAM-Killer). Although it does not directly retrieve personal information or track surfing, Aureate attaches itself to Web browsers and can serve ads even if a user is not online, since it stores pop-up ad materials on a user's hard drive during online sessions and presents them at any time. Software experts say Radiate is one of the most difficult programs to remove from hard drives, and in 2000, Microsoft found that Radiate's software caused severe crashes with several versions of Internet Explorer.