Kind of a strange question: I'm teaching a class on removal of Adware and PUPs. To give people some experience, I'd like to give them VMs with adware intentionally installed and have them remove it. Unfortunately, finding some good adware to put on there is proving a bit difficult, since searching for it only brings up removal tools. The best adware will:
- Include some kind of pop-up ad on any webpage on any of the three major browsers (Chrome, IE, Firefox)
- Install a toolbar in any of the three major browsers
- Be more difficult to remove than a benign program (ie, you can't just uninstall it from Programs and Features)
- Include some kind of tracking capabilities
- Download other adware
- Other fun things (constantly re-opening programs saying my AV is out of date, setting up a proxy, etc)
However, it shouldn't be full-on malware. The people I'm teaching are by no means expert users. I don't want some kind of Crypto-Locker stuff, I don't want my VMs to be part of a botnet, and it can't be really hard to remove (so, doable with some decent removal tools). Also, it can't make any kind of attempt to propagate, survive anything beyond a cursory attempt to delete it, or break out of my VMs.
I'll be using Win 7 and 8, so adware that works on both is preferable.