
BonziBuddy - amerf1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
======
warent
"In 2002 an article in Consumer Reports Web Watch labelled BonziBuddy as
spyware, stating that it contains a backdoor trojan that collects information
from users."

My, how times have changed. These days that would be considered expected
behavior.

~~~
asark
Turns out there was _so much_ money in spyware, spam, scummy ad sites, and so
on, that the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those
exact things. All those bad actors won the war. If you want to help run the
show, or if you want those who do to shower money on you, those bad activities
are what you do.

Also Flash (in spirit if not in fact—thanks Javascript and modern web frontend
development), popups, et c. In many ways all the worst things about the mid-
period Web are thriving more now than they did then.

~~~
nineteen999
> the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those exact
> things

The marketing and management arms might have been the ones to make the
decision to go "all-in", but it was the web developers who implemented it.

Sure, a paycheck is a paycheck and all that, but let's not pretend that the
developer community has clean hands in all this.

~~~
millzlane
let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives.
Just like there are people out there willing to shoot you in the face for your
wallet. There are people willing to write code to spy on you for a paycheck.

~~~
nineteen999
> let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives

Not really, but then I work in emergency services infrastructure and every
line of code in our product is intended to help first responders save lives.

I agree with the rest of your comments though.

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grizzles
I remember going to see a friend (a cs grad) and he had BonziBuddy installed
on his computer. I asked what it did and he couldn't give me a coherent
answer. Then at one point he pressed BonziBuddy to "leave" and the bear dived
into the screen and disappeared into a little dot. I asked him what happened
expecting a tech laden answer and he said "it went in there" and pointed to
where the dot/portal had been.

This odd conversation has always stuck in my mind about the power a little bit
of graphics and animation can do to distract users from a bit of code's true
intent.

~~~
ohnope
Thank you for sharing. I enjoyed imagining how your friend pointed and said
"it went in there."

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duxup
I worked PC tech support for a major PC hardware company back then.

It was really a chore trying to tell people who complained their PC was slow
to uninstall their 8 toolbars and that stupid monkey... they couldn't explain
what good it did them or when they ever used them, but they sure as hell
didn't want it removed.

~~~
john-radio
Quick, list every app that's on your phone, the reason why it's installed, and
the reason why you trust it!

~~~
freehunter
I trust it because it came from an app store that has humans reviewing
submissions, was programmed against an API that requires it explicitly ask for
every permission it's given, with an OS that allows me to revoke that
permission whenever I want to, with an assurance that it cannot break out of
that permissions structure, and a knowledge that it cannot run arbitrary code
in the background without me knowing it.

Windows (and Linux and macOS and other desktop OSes) offer none of these
security features without third party software.

~~~
oarsinsync
Unfortunately, that still doesn't prevent a large number of them tracking you
using permissions you've granted, or permissions it doesn't need to explicitly
ask for.

There have been a number of articles recently about iPhone apps phoning home
regularly without user knowledge.

iOS is arguably significantly better than the alternatives, but lets not kid
ourselves as to how far that trust should go.

Services like Guardian Firewall for iOS[0] wouldn't be in continued active
development if the OS or review process was sufficient. Of course, there'll be
plenty of snakeoil as time goes on, but at this stage, there's a lot of
credibility behind the need for these services.

[0] [https://guardianapp.com/](https://guardianapp.com/)

------
byron_fast
I stayed at a bed & breakfast and they gave me free cheesecake after
uninstalling Bonzi for them. I just wanted to browse the web faster! Didn't
take much to uninstall malware back then. I probably added years to the useful
life of their computer, it ate so much CPU.

~~~
TheCapn
I remember trying to remove BB from a PC we had and having a hell of a time
doing it. It wasn't just asking it to stop in Programs & Features, I was
rooting it out of the registry for hours and if you rebooted without getting
all of it, the talons spread.

You got lucky.

~~~
byron_fast
Lucky, or an earlier version with shorter talons.

------
badger_bravo
I remember installing this on my Mom's computer when I was 8 and my dad
cussing trying to uninstall it. good times.

~~~
jakejarvis
Ditto! For some reason I used to think the more tray icons the better.

But not as bad as when I tried to delete C:\Windows before it would try to
stop you. (For science, of course.)

~~~
derefr
When I was a youngin', I used to create meaningless shortcuts all over the
desktop using those PIFMGR icons
([https://i.stack.imgur.com/I1YqC.jpg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I1YqC.jpg)).

I think kids and adults aren't so different; we all just really want to
collect and stare at colorful juicy berries—er, "apps"—on our screens (re: the
research that turning them greyscale makes us look at them less.) Adults just
have a greater need for rationalization toward practicality on top of an
entirely aesthetic desire, and thus download apps with nice icons (or toolbars
_containing_ nice icons) that _seem_ like they'd do something useful... and
then just never use them.

~~~
bscphil
Oh my, I completely forgot about this. I would change all the icons for the
shortcuts on my desktop to "better" ones from this list too. Good times.

------
Anthony-G
I used to work in an Internet café in the early-mid 2000s and the first time
came across BonziBuddy, it was a very frustrating and time-consuming task to
remove it (and similar malware) from a Windows OS. I ran Mandriva at home but
I became quite familiar with the Windows registry after lots of time spent
removing various toolbars/spyware. When you learned the tricks the malware-
writers used, you could remove their crap quickly enough.

Still, it was like playing whack-a-mole if there were multiple different
malicious programs installed on the system and I recall that removing some
malware required rebooting into safe mode before attempting to remove it.

Soon after this, I started to install GNU/Linux distros on the computers of
friends and family to avoid the problem altogether. There was a lot more
satisfaction in helping people administer their sensibly designed OS than in
continually having to remediate their Windows systems where every user was an
administrator and it was so easy for them to install malware.

~~~
fouc
Wasn't it a headache dealing with hardware compatibility/drivers in linux if
you were dealing with an assortment of computers?

~~~
Anthony-G
Ah no. In case it wasn’t clear, I was installing GNU/Linux (Mandriva and
later, Ubuntu)was for only a _small_ number of family and friends – who had
previously been asking me to “fix” (remove the crap from) their Windows
systems or who were already interested in trying an alternative. They weren’t
gamers, running particularly exotic hardware or business users.
Interoperability between OpenOffice (no LibreOffice back then) and users of MS
Office was the only real issue they came across. Otherwise, I had to provide
very little support – once their systems were up and running.

------
jakelazaroff
This was on all the computers in my middle school, back in 2002 or so.

I wonder if this made it up to the front page because of nostalgia, or because
an even younger cohort has never heard of it. What's the lower bound on ages
for people who actually remember BonziBuddy?

~~~
freehunter
Warning: bad math and faulty assumptions incoming.

Considering it was discontinued in 2004 and people generally have reliable
long term memories starting around 5-8 years old, I'd say the youngest person
to reasonably remember BonziBuddy would be 20-23 years old. The peak of
popularity would probably be 2002, when the lawsuit that shut the company down
was filed, so the last group of people who would be widely exposed to BB and
have memories of it would be 22-25 years old at the youngest.

As someone quite older than that demographic, I had completely forgotten about
BonziBuddy and seeing this brought up is definitely nostalgic for me.

------
unicornporn
If you want a warezed BonziBuddy, Ramzi will help you out:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x7teBrEGJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x7teBrEGJE)

~~~
Jach
If this is the youtube video thread, Bonzi Buddy can still be made to sing...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF26ZyZRJbU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF26ZyZRJbU)
(RIP Harambe.)

------
titojankowski
Anyone remember Kevin Rose and The Broken?

Ramzi's "hacker tip" \-- "how to use Bonzi Buddy"
[https://youtu.be/oYYnF1ZeOo8?t=454](https://youtu.be/oYYnF1ZeOo8?t=454)

'Be careful, some software cost money'

~~~
robohoe
Yep! I used to love their videos.

Related to Bonzi Buddy, does everyone remember search toolbars for web
browsers? Everyone had their own toolbar that would hijack your browser:
google, yahoo, ask Jeeves, etc.

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miohtama
Looks like the list of supported activities is say that Alexa does today.
Business model seems to be the same as well.

------
owaislone
One of my few friends who had a desktop computer at home had this thing
installed when we were kids. He used to make it shout swear words in our
native language. Can't say it wasn't fun.

~~~
jsgo
We were in school (computer electronics class) and we had two machines on
opposing sides of a row with this installed. Granted, we had other games and
stuff installed too, but the highlight was when two people would man these
particular computers and use it to trash talk the person on the other side.
The voice was so bad it made the whole experience more comical than it was
insulting.

Good times with bad software.

------
marzell
It's Clippy for your entire OS! I'm very familiar with the monkey image,
although I instantly recognized what it was and what the experience was
probably like, and luckily never touched a computer that had it installed.

Now we've got Alex/Siri/Google assistants, which certainly have a lot more
utility, but they are cross-platform, always-on, and far more invasive because
we allow them to be.

------
Simulacra
I really hated that program, you always had to be careful when installing
software because it was getting prepackaged

------
HiroshiSan
Nowadays you don't need a Trojan to collect user info.

edit: pun unintended.

------
sneakernets
Almost every single feature BonziBuddy ever "offered" was already included in
Windows, but no one ever used the Windows components, or even knew they
existed. So you could whip up a "buddy" using stuff already in the OS, claim
it's a $40 value, and then spam them with ads.

And it worked!

------
phaedryx
Wow, I opened the Wikipedia page and immediately felt a twinge of anger. What
has it been, 20+ years now?

------
jameslk
I remember when BonziBuddy and Comet Cursor were the go-to trolling tools for
gamers. If someone asked how to "hack in counter strike" one of these
solutions were suggested.

------
Fej
A great retrospective:
[https://youtu.be/L958sMz1kWs](https://youtu.be/L958sMz1kWs)

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dokka
I would love to build a harmless and open source version of BonziBuddy. One
day I'll do it.

------
darepublic
Despite all the hate there was a kernel of a great idea here. This was a
proto-alexa

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itbeho
I wonder what the creators of BonziBuddy are doing these days?

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nullbyte
Oh my god I forgot about this. Brings back good memories.

------
kahlonel
I liked the green parrot version more.

~~~
dsl
Petey the Parrot. The model was originally stolen from the Microsoft Agent
SDK, and about a year after launch Microsoft got wind of it and made them swap
it out for their own 3D model. The lovable purple guy.

------
seeker61
I can't wait to eat that monkey

------
ttarabula
Ah, purple simian Windows AIDS. fond memories

