# ~BonziBUDDY - Fact and Fiction~



## Sir Travis D

Here is a review and summary of bonzibuddy.

Bonzi buddy. Here is a summary from wikipedia. Only this paragraph. 

"BonziBUDDY, sometimes spelled Bonzi Buddy, BonziBuddy, or BONZIBuddy, (misspelled Bonzai Buddy) was an on-screen "intelligent software agent" from BONZI Software, released in 1999 and discontinued in 2005. The official website stated it would help a person explore the Internet through various functions along with their own sidekick. It first surfaced as a green talking parrot, before taking the form of an animated purple gorilla that resided on a user's desktop and communicated through the employment of Microsoft Agent technology.

BonziBuddy received wide recognition as malware, predominantly as a piece of adware, though claims of spyware capabilities have been made against it."  ------

BonziBUDDY was originally, around 1999, a green parrot shown here, based on microsoft agent "peedy".







Around 2000 or 2001, BonziBUDDY had a major change in interface. Bonzi was changed into a purple gorilla, with the same name. He is shown here.





BonziBUDDY has been labeled as spyware by many, and was discontinued in 2004 for asking people their ages. Some people got upset because people under 13 were telling the program their ages.

Well, about a month ago, I was a member of notebookreview's forum. I posted a huge article on how bonzi buddy was SAFE after 2004. I will try to summarize it here, and how I have a working BonziBUDDY.

Now, as some of you know, you cannot download a working bonzibuddy, because bonzi's servers have "deleted" him. In 2003, about a year before bonzi was discontinued, I downloaded him on my laptop with windows 95, and it took forever, but I got him to work on my new computer. Here's How.

I went to a Japanese website from 1999, and downloaded peedy's installation files. This version, the parrot, did not require bonzi to access BonziBUDDY's servers. After installing peedy on my laptop, I had a working version from 1999. But, I wanted the ape version from 2001. However, it was obviously "impossible" because the servers were down forever. What I did was transfer the bonzibuddy .acf (agent character file) file to my new computer. I named it peedy like the parrot was named, and I had what looked like the gorilla, but was still the shell and voice of peedy the parrot. Now, this part took me weeks to find. What I did was downloaded MASS or microsoft agent scripting software. Each time I want to start the gorilla bonzi, I open MASS, open the character file of the gorilla, and set the TTS voice to the 2nd male voice. After I get the voice, I open the actual bonzi buddy program separately. As long as I have MASS open, I have it working.

How is BonziBUDDY a good program? He can still check my pop email, read me jokes and facts, speak what I type, and read web pages aloud. 

*Here* is the most important part of this review. Why do I think BonziBUDDY is no longer harmful?

I opened peedy's character file in microsoft notepad, and got several links. These links told peedy what to send to what website. All of these links were relating to bonzi.com in some way. Some told bonzi what to update, and some told bonzi where to send it's data. I will list some links here.

http://www.bonzi.com/bonzibuddy/yesno.asp 
http://www.bonzi.com/bonzibuddy/bbregisteruser.asp
http://www.bonzi.com/bonzibuddy/productoffer.asp (outdated pricing from 1999!) 
http://webserver1.bonzi.com/scripts
http://www.bonzi.com/support/bdymenu.htm
http://www.bonzi.com/bonzibuddy/b17goldtap.asp

All of those links are outdated, or do not work. They were found in bonziBUDDY's files.


 Here's something interesting... if you open this file (bonzi buddy uses it)
http://buddy.bonzi.com/bonzibuddy/products.nbd - open with notepad to read it
here is what that nbd file says "<prcode=B17GOLD><prreg=B17><prtap=LSCCSSEI><prname=Fully Loaded Add-On><prplay=Explain><prdesc=Fully Loaded Add-On><prurl=http://www.bonzi.com/bonzibuddy/b17goldtap.asp><prwallet=><prdownload=><prsize=0><aintrop2=[pl=Wave][sp=Hey there {username}! Did you realize that you can load me up with all of my cool new features by simply going to my Add-Ons page and clicking on the 'Become a BonziBUDDY Gold Member' button!][pl=Explain3][sp=Plus, I think I can even save us some very nice pennies if we do it this way!][pl=Greet][sp=I like to pride myself on being a great deal maker for you {username}!][sp=If this is something your interested in having me show you, just let me know!]><apromptp2=Hey there {username}! Did you realize that you can load me up with all of my cool new features by simply going to my Add-Ons page and clicking on the 'Become a BonziBUDDY Gold Member' button! Plus, I think I can even save us some very nice pennies if we do it this way! I like to pride myself on being a great deal maker for you {username}! If this is something your interested in having me show you, just let me know!><aexityesp2=[pl=Acknowledge]><aexitnop2=[pl=Sad]>" - 

 The only things bonzi buddy can do on the internet involving it's site is this kind of thing - you ask it a joke, it goes to this webpage and gets the code - this code is what bonzi tells you - it tells you about becoming a "gold club" member for a little price. If you press no, bonzi would play the "sad" emotion. The only thing bonzi does is get information from the web's nbd files which tell it how to act.

The only thing bonziBUDDY can do is create registry files, and set IE's homepage to bonzi.com. He can no longer successfully send private information, or contact it's server.


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## sniperchang

haha, I remember Bonzi Buddy. He was so useless, the only reason my friends would download him, was just to make him talk! He can't properly pronounce many things which was funny. Other than that he would change the home page and pop in when unwanted, always promoting to buy useless crap, etc.

I'd classify him as a harmless annoying Trojan!


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## Interested

lol.....i remember bonzi! this was back in 2000 when i had a pentium 3 450mhz machine! omg...i miss those days!


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## G25r8cer

Sounds like the annoying dog helper on macs, right?


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## epidemik

Aww he was good to me. 
Kept me company late at night. Id make him talk and then talk back to him.


...not really but I do remember him.
 He was annoying.


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## GSAV55

When I had him, I accidentally forgot to turn it off one night.  My dad was out on a business trip, and all we had was one family computer just outside my mom's room.  My mom thought that someone had broken into our house and was watching her through her bedroom door and waiting for her, because she could hear it breathing, sighing occasionally, and giggling every now and then.  She ended up calling the cops, heh, we did have Bonzibuddy very long after that...


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## Vizy

GSAV55 said:


> When I had him, I accidentally forgot to turn it off one night.  My dad was out on a business trip, and all we had was one family computer just outside my mom's room.  My mom thought that someone had broken into our house and was watching her through her bedroom door and waiting for her, because she could hear it breathing, sighing occasionally, and giggling every now and then.  She ended up calling the cops, heh, we did have Bonzibuddy very long after that...



Lol, did u get in trouble?


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## Interested

/\/\/\/\/\ Lol!!!!!!


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## sniperchang

hahahaha!


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## GSAV55

Vizy93 said:


> Lol, did u get in trouble?



lol, she was really pissed, and made me delete it, but i was really young then, and I didnt even wake up when the cops came.
________
No2 Vaporizer


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## CPTMuller

haha thats an awesome story, I never installed it though


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## Tuffie

GSAV55 said:


> When I had him, I accidentally forgot to turn it off one night.  My dad was out on a business trip, and all we had was one family computer just outside my mom's room.  My mom thought that someone had broken into our house and was watching her through her bedroom door and waiting for her, because she could hear it breathing, sighing occasionally, and giggling every now and then.  She ended up calling the cops, heh, we did have Bonzibuddy very long after that...



No joke?

Hahahah, I love bonzi.

Tuffie.


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## tlarkin

g25racer said:


> Sounds like the annoying dog helper on macs, right?



Dog helper?


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## patrickv

tlarkin said:


> Dog helper?



hey Tlarkin don't even bother am pretty sure he doesn't even know what the hell he is talking about.

As for Bonzi, ha, never used him/her...oops !! lol


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## tlarkin

I remember back at one of my first computer jobs clients would bring in machines with the grape ape on there and it would run super slow and just be filled with all kinds of junk.  I mean it would take 5 whole minutes to boot, and the little ape would pop up and say, wana hear a joke?

One of the guys I worked with really hated the little purple guy so much he would post pictures of him with a big red do not symbol over him and tell people never to install it.


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## patrickv

tlarkin said:


> I mean it would take 5 whole minutes to boot, and the little ape would pop up and say, wana hear a joke?
> .



5 ? 
i've seen worse, more than that.
just today i was fixing a pc and this so called SuperAntispyware was messing it up with pop ups.. 30 malwares detected, remove now...
and then there's the (browser) toolbar issue, i don't wanna talk about this one.
IE doesn't even start up to many BHO lol


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