BonziBuddy | Hacker News Reader

BonziBuddy

en.wikipedia.org

111 pointsamerf180 comments

"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.

"The activities the program is said to engage in include constantly resetting the user's web browser homepage to bonzi.com without the user's permission, prompting and tracking various information about the user, and serving advertisements"

My favorite quote, in that these activities are now essentially baked into Windows 10

I’d categorize these activities as malware. Making unwanted mutable actions on my OS? Definitely malware...

By my current standards (which were totally mainstream in tech communities in the 90s) most modern non-FOSS software these days is malware. And some of the FOSS stuff is too, depending on what build you get.

Having just this morning had to turn Automatic Updates back off on my Windows 7 box and (for the third time) fix the gyro sensor driver Windows 10's updates keeps breaking on my laptop, I feel you.

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.

> Also Flash (in spirit if not in fact—thanks Javascript and modern web frontend development), popups, et c.

Installing NoScript is the new "click to activate Flash." It's a bit of a pain, sure, but it makes the web so much more usable in general. And once you've whitelisted your day-to-day websites, it's almost invisible.

Can also recommend ublock origin's built-in script blocker.

It's really the only business model that ended up working for the Internet at a large scale, at least on the consumer side.

On the contrary, I think its existence suppresses other business models, by being somewhat more efficient (at concentrating money, that is).

The coupling of a scummy ad business model with incredibly large caches of personal data turns out to provide a huge moat against both direct (ad space) and indirect (other business models providing services) competitors, by allowing slightly more effective ads (counters direct competitors) and extra convenience to users (suppresses other business models) while also being "free" (again, suppresses other business models).

> 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.

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.

> 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.

The developers and technical people who invented them are the ones who made much the money. Everyone I know who works in ad tech has gone through several acquisitions and is stinking rich - they tend to be on the more sociopathic side though. Just a correlation I’ve seen.

The mobile revolution really boiled that frog. For some reason a change in form factor caused everything to completely forget about freedom, openness, and privacy, because ooh shiny.

> because ooh shiny.

Because something that people carry all day every day, that follows them everywhere they go and sees almost everything they do, say and think.

Another one from the era was alexa back when it was a toolbar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexa_Internet . What was once considered malware is now backed right into the browser.

This is also why I have no trouble calling google a spyware company.

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.

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

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.

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

Well, I trust most apps because my understanding is they can't be running indefinitely in the background without a notification (which I would notice) and can't read arbitrary files on my phone's filesystem without permission

You're moving the goalposts. Here's a list of every app on my phone that's making it slow and unusable: []

There aren't any that I'm not using and killing my phone if that is what you mean.

You're not being very reasonable; a more accurate way to put it would be to ask you if you have <App> installed on your phone, what good is it for you, and when (if) you've ever used it.

And then getting defensive about removing it if you're told by an expert you've contacting yourself that <App> is (part of) the cause of your woes.

Not exactly the same scenario as you posited.

I think the premise is if you can't name it explicitly, there is a good chance you don't actually need it.

Well in that context I'm pretty good at that. I clean out apps regularly, although it doesn't result in much as ... I don't really have "many" installed that I don't use / don't use that may.

If people insist it's important but can't say why I'd assume it's something they feel ashamed talking about. It didn't show porn did it?

Or its something they might not remember...

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.

New versions of macOS put up permission dialogs when apps try to access hardware or sensitive data.

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/

Honestly half the apps on my phone are junk that Android and/or HTC ordain that I'm not allowed to uninstall.

Are you referring to android? As far as I know, iOS has proper sandboxing of apps so having a bunch of random apps shouldn't affect overall speed because they're typically not running all the time.

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.

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.

Lucky, or an earlier version with shorter talons.

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

Same! I’m pretty sure my parents just accepted that the BonziBuddy website would be the homepage on the family computer whether we liked it or not.

In hindsight I wonder what other, less obvious, malware I installed as a clueless kid with free reign internet access.

I had BonziBuddy, CometCursor, a toolbar for something called "Slotch.com", and RealPlayer (after they updated it to try and take over your computer) installed on my personal laptop as a kid, and always wondered why other people's computers went so slow when my computer had a newer CPU.

God,

Cometcursor being so horrible inspired me to learn how to make .ico files with transparency in mspaint.... good times!

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.)

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).

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.

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.

On my first PC, when I was 10, had a Norton Commander that gave me way too much power.

I found C:\ to be a mess, so I moved all files into a System folder.

I used the PC once a week or so, so when I started it again a week later I had no memory of what I did and it just wouldn't boot anymore.

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.

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

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.

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?

I'm in my late 20's and I remember bonzi buddy.

Mid-20s, never heard of it.

Early 20's, have heard of it, originally because memes and later out of curiosity

Mid 20s, have interacted with it

Late 20's, installed it without knowing it was spyware, it looked cool. Dad was not pleased.

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.

Not quite 20; I have never interacted with BonziBuddy.

30, have never heard of it. Did I manage to miss this?

Late 20's, never encountered it myself but I knew it existed

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x7teBrEGJE

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

Anyone remember Kevin Rose and The Broken?

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

'Be careful, some software cost money'

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

edit: pun unintended.

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!

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

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.

A great retrospective: https://youtu.be/L958sMz1kWs

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

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

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

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

I liked the green parrot version more.

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.

I can't wait to eat that monkey

Ah, purple simian Windows AIDS. fond memories

Reply on news.ycombinator.com