A Harvard study on Gator's spyware software has uncovered that the software does allow a company to place pop-up ads that will be displayed after or during a user's visit to competing websites. Gator also targets search engines and shows pop-up ads when users enter a particular keyword or phrase. Gator's pop-ups only show for web surfer's that have downloaded its software. However, not everyone who has Gator downloaded it intentionally -- Gator has been accused in the past of hiding its software in the downloads of other software. Experts have also said that Gator's software can be difficult to remove once it has been installed.
