Spyware Information: BonziBuddy
This application is spyware. Spyware software generally does not provide any services to you; rather, it is primarily designed to watch you as you use your computer or surf the Internet, and report this information to hackers, advertising companies or other individuals who have placed the spyware on your computer.
Spyware is often bundled with free software. The company which produces the free software gets paid by advertising companies for each computer that becomes "infected" with the spyware. To protect their revenue, the free software companies will sometimes force you to run the advertising spyware to use their free software.
- Size: 17,650,688 bytes
- Threat level: Medium (more info...)
- Detections: 4,167 this month: 0
- Author: Bonzi.com
- Appeared: October, 2001
Research
- Method of infection: Can be downloaded directly from www.bonzi.com, or from shareware or trial software sites.
- Advertising: Yes. Bonzi has been associated with deceptive advertising practices in the past (displaying system-like advertisements that say "your computer is running slowly") and was the target of a class action lawsuit.
- Privacy policy: The privacy policy is online here. Some elements of note:
"Personal information is collected when users voluntarily register for membership services ... One method of collecting aggregate information about your activities online (such as the pages you access most frequently or the search terms you enter), and information volunteered by you (such as survey or registration information), is by tracking Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. ... We may receive personal usage and demographic information from our third-party partners, and we also collect e-mail addresses from users who send us support mail ... The computers that deliver the Web pages to you automatically identify your computer by its IP address. When you request a page from one of our sites, our servers log your IP address. ... As a measure of user interest, we track search terms that are entered into our sites search features. ... Our sites use cookies to record information. ... BONZI.COM shares aggregate information with third parties for advertising and promotional purposes."
- Security issues: Will download and install other adware, including ClickTillUWin.
Spyware Detection Stats
- Spyware Fingerprints: 91,859
- Detections: 6,792,657
- Detections this Month: 804
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