Claria exited the adware business at the end of second quarter 2006,[7] and eventually shut down completely in October 2008.

The "Gator" (also known as Gain AdServer) products collected personal information from its unknowing users, including websites visited and portions of credit card numbers[8] to target and display ads on the computers of web surfers.

The company changed its name to Claria Corporation on October 30, 2003 in an effort to "better communicate the expanding breadth of offerings that [they] provide to consumers and advertisers", according to CEO and President Jeff McFadden.

Originally released in 1999, Gator was most frequently installed together with programs being offered free of charge, such as Go!Zilla, or Kazaa.

[11][12] Gator's end user license agreement attempted to disallow its manual removal by prohibiting "unauthorized means" of uninstallation.

[32] However, after installing the applications, a user would continually be shown ads from the Gain network, even when the programs were not running in the foreground.

These programs all employ the user's Internet connection to report behavior information back to Claria.

[39] Other spyware-reporting agencies, such as Computer Associates and Panda Software's TruPrevent Technologies, still label Claria products as both adware and spyware.

In March 2006, Claria claimed that it would be exiting the adware business and focusing on personalized search technology.