BONZIBUDDY: Earth's Friendliest [Computer] Virus

you are still watching disrupt on January 3rd 1999 NASA launches the Mars polar Lander in search of discovering water on another planet on April 14th a hailstorm in Sydney Australia causes 1.7 billion dollars of damage the costliest natural disaster in Australia's history October 12th at non-movic is born to become the six billionth human being living on planet Earth and on December 2nd 1999 one of the world's most infamous malware programs begins to spread I don't think we've been properly introduced I'm OMSI would you like me to help you send out an email to your friends 1999 is the year that millions of Microsoft users around the world are officially introduced to Bonzi buddy [Music] friendly purple primate computer whiz ready and willing to be your personal internet liaison he advertises himself as software that can talk walk joke browse search email even sing You songs all you have to do is download the Bonzi buddy program right to your personal computer sign up for a Bonzi buddy account by filling out all of your personal details and the information super highway is finally at your fingertips but to better understand where Bonzi buddy came from and how exactly he reached so many people so quickly we have to take a trip back in time to 1997. Bill Gates was slowly taking over the world around this same time a study from Stanford University conducted by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nash caught Bill's attention of this study was to say that people prefer to connect with computers no differently than they would connect with another person Bill decided that this finding was so important it needed to become a central Focus for the launch of Windows 97 [Music] so Microsoft assembled a team of its best in brightest to figure out how to ensure users could build a personal connection with their computers so they referred to this Stanford University study and determined they needed to build what would become known as a virtual assistant the result of this Cutting Edge research and Microsoft's Think Tank was clippy it looks like you are attempting to humanize machines to appeal to a broader audience would you like me to fully thwart those plans unfortunately people deeply hated Clippy but the idea of a virtual assistant remained a large part of software strategy in the late 90s as clippy paved the way for a new kind of human computer relationship I overcome death destroyer of worlds it's important to understand that at this time people had no real understanding of how to use the internet so the idea of a virtual assistant was appealing both as a business model but also to the average computer user interested in learning how to actually use the internet [Music] so while clippy was educating people on why virtual assistants were useful he was also deeply annoying users [Music] it seems that choosing a paper clip as the Avatar to establish a deep personal connection between the user and the computer turned out to be an odd choice so people became open to meeting new virtual assistants and this created the perfect opportunity for a software company to offer a more likable alternative and as it turned out people much preferred the idea of a singing Purple Monkey in place of a paperclip surfing on a notepad one of Bonzi Buddy's most intriguing features for a user in the late 90s is his speech synthesizer at that time text-to-speech technology existed but it wasn't available for the average person but now with your incredibly friendly purple computer monkey Bonzi buddy you too can have access to this Cutting Edge technology with Bonzi buddy your computer keyboard is now obsolete all you have to do is let the purple monkey live inside your computer the problem was that Bonzi software advertisements had deceptive practices the first of which is they would appear as if they were official Windows prompts this would direct the user to download internet boost 2001 another one of Bonzi software's programs that claimed to boost your internet speed next they would sometimes tell the user that their IP address was being leaked again leading to an urgent request to download and lastly these ads contain what's defined as fuis or fake user interfaces so clicking close actually wouldn't do anything at all you'd presumably have to click ok and when you clicked close to exit these pop-ups they often wouldn't actually close they just appear close the truth was that underneath the friendly monkey persona there was something much darker going on a Bonzi buddy juggled coconuts in the corner of your screen and sang You nursery rhymes he was distracting you from what he was doing in the background because it turns out Bonzi buddy wasn't really your buddy after all Bonzi was using a backdoor Trojan installed on your computer to collect your contacts and steal your personal information all while he overrode your computer to display malicious advertisements at this point Fonzie has reportedly become the third most visited website in the world right behind Netscape and Microsoft but they've achieved this through nefarious means to be more specific Bonzi buddy was caught periodically changing millions of Microsoft users home pages to none other than bonzisoftware.com and this is the moment where Bonzi buddy just flew too close to the Sun Bonzi buddy had officially grown too big too fast the friendly purple monkey that Stole the World's Hearts was found to be stealing everyone's personal information instead Bonzi buddy was on your computer because they had developed a malicious spyware forced you to download it through deceptive practices and slowly collected more and more of your personal information so this was the beginning of the end for Bonzi and soon after Bonzi would come Crashing Down [Music] the law firm Lukens and Anis PS has issued that bonzi's advertisement practices or intrusive deceptive annoying one attorney from the same Law Firm volunteers to serve as a plaintiff after he reportedly spent 20 minutes in a fit of rage unable to exit out of the Bonzi pop-ups on his computer screen Bonzi software on the other hand makes a solid point technically they weren't violating any laws the software Inc believes that it never violated any law with regards to its advertising practices and simply settled to avoid the high cost of litigation Fonzi attorney Sarah Rizzo said through email Fonzi takes great pride in its internet products and strives to maintain high standards in all of its business practices still Bonzi settles for 175 000 and agrees to label their ads as ads change the OK button to OK and change the fui Bonzi remains on everyone's computers until 2004. but back at the beginning the user is prompted to fill out their information under normal circumstances this would be a fairly common practice but the problem Bonzi runs into is that they are found to be targeting children through exploiting bonds is irresistible personality I bet you were my friend and so the Federal Trade Commission hits Bonzi with a penalty for gathering information from children under 13 without parental consent under the children's online Privacy Act they're forced to pay 75 000 in fines within a year everything has shut down discontinued and been put to rest and after this Bonzi buddy is officially abandoned the Left 4 Dead [Music] except around 2010 Bonzi would see something of a resurgence an archived website and downloadable version of Bonzi comes back online offering a usable version without the annoying pop-ups or malicious spyware a sort of fan-made homage appears Bonzi World which allows users to connect with their own monkey A Relic from another time when the internet was young and open to experimentation [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Disrupt

Views: 301,041

Keywords: 1weekinvr, 1 week in virtual reality, disrupt, disrupt vr

Id: 21NwKru-VwY

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 30 2022