was ordered to pay $75,000 in fees, among other aspects, for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 with BonziBUDDY.[5 On February 18, 2004, the Federal Trade Commission released a statement indicating that Bonzi Software, Inc. In the settlement, Bonzi agreed to modify their ads so that they looked less like a Windows dialogue box and to make them more obviously advertisements. Originally brought against Bonzi Software on December 4, 2002, the suit accused Bonzi of using its banner advertisements of deceptively imitating Windows computer alerts, alerting the user that their IP Address is being broadcast. reported the settlement of a class action suit on May 27, 2003.

Spyware Guide’s entry on the program states that it installs automatically without user knowledge or consent via an ActiveX object in Internet Explorer.Īnti-virus company Trend Micro classified the software as spyware/grayware and adware, but not malware.īonziBUDDY ApeThere were two legal cases about the software. Among the activities the program is said to engage in include constantly resetting the user’s web browser homepage to without the user’s permission, prompting and tracking various information about the user, and serving advertisements. An article in Consumer Reports’s Web Watch labels BonziBUDDY as spyware, stating that it is a Backdoor Santa in that it collects information from users.

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