WHAT WAS BONZI BUDDY? A BRIEF HISTORY

 

In 1999, a purple gorilla by the name of Bonzi Buddy, who called himself “your best friend on the Internet,” took the Internet by a storm - but not in a good way. Named after its creators, Joe and Jay Bonzi, Bonzi Buddy was designed to be a digital personal assistant that was similar to Microsoft Word’s Clippy. Bonzi Buddy could read your emails and the webpages you browsed to you through text-to-speech technology as well as keep track of important dates and events coming up. It could also tell jokes to you. Sounds all dandy, right? Most of all, Bonzi Buddy was 100% free to install.

There, however, were several red flags that would point to the program being a sheep in wolf’s clothing:

Upon installation, users were required to fill out their addresses.

For several years the program’s webpage claimed that Bonzi Buddy would only be available for free for a limited amount of time. When the window expired, the price for Bonzi Buddy would increase to $40. The site never revealed when this price increase would happen, which would naturally make users want to install the program as soon as possible.

Occasionally, your web browser’s homepage would be changed to Bonzi Buddy’s website without your doing or consent.

Along with filling out all of your basic personal information such as your full name and address, it was later revealed that Bonzi Buddy was using this information as well as your data from web browsing to track and sell it so that certain advertisements would be viewable to you. Usually, when you sign up for certain programs or social media websites, you consent to give your data to the developers, but Bonzi Buddy did not make it explicit to their users that this was happening.

The FCC found BonziBuddy guilty of violating COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) by doing this. Under federal law, children under the age of 13 cannot have their personal data shared and sold, as children were installing the program on their own without the written consent of their parents, which the developers were aware of since users were required to enter their age range. The United States Government offered Bonzi Buddy’s developers to pay a whopping total of $75,000 in penalties as a consequence of this. So in other words, Bonzi Buddy was like a fake friend who had been taking advantage of you the entire time. The program was discontinued in late 2004 after receiving numerous complaints and lawsuits, and Bonzi Software ceased operation in 2016.

Luckily, there are computer experts like us who are here to help you with any uncertainties you may have about the world of computer technology. If you are in need of Orange County IT solutions that will have your back unlike Bonzi Buddy, please call Newport Computer Group today! As one of the most respected https://www.newportcomputergroup.com/, our friendly experts are able to step up to any task you need to be done. Please give us a call at (949) 436-8324 or email us at info@newportcomputergroup.com. You can also fill out our contact form here on our website. We can’t wait to have you on board!