Pay to surf (PTS) is an online business model which gained popularity in the late 1990’s and experienced a significant decline following the dot-com crash. PTS companies advertised their main advantage as sharing the advertising revenue with their user base in a form of rewards for watching promotional content over the web. In order to participate, users would need to install software that tracked their browsing activities and displayed targeted advertisements. Ultimately, users receive financial compensation for their time spent browsing the web. A few PTS companies are still operating on the market to this day. Process A PTS company provided their members with a program to be installed on personal computers which facilitated the display of advertiser banner ads while a member browsed the web. As the company's view bar software allows tracking of websites that the user visited, the PTS company was able to display targeted ads for their advertisers. These advertisers paid the PTS company a small amount (typically US$0.50) for every hour a member surfed the internet. PTS Member payments were typically finite due to the limited amount of time per month (typically 20 hours) for which they could surf, and the fee that they paid each new member referred to the company (typically US$0.05–0.10 per recruit). A member was able to recruit as many new members as possible, and to make a profit encouraged some users to spam referrals. This action was officially forbidden per the User's Agreement and strictly regulated, especially among minors, who needed the consent of their parents or legal guardians to use this business model. PTS companies AllAdvantage is an example of a company which used a PTS business model. It launched in March 1999 and grew to 13 million members after one year of launching using the multi-level marketing system of recruiting new members. The scheme largely capitalized on the notion that anyone could make money on the internet with little effort, under the slogan "Get Paid to Surf the Web". PTS companies attracted people who attempted to defraud the company out of money and members of the company were frequently forced to terminate their accounts due to spammers. Software utilities started appearing which allowed users to simulate surfing activity and some users also created mechanical mouse-moving devices which ran around their desks (i.e. "JiggyMouse"). These programs and devices allowed users to get paid simply for leaving their computers on.