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"In 2002 an article in Consumer Reports Web Watch labelled BonziBuddy as spyware, stating that it contains a backdoor trojan that collects information from user

by warent 7y ago

"In 2002 an article in Consumer Reports Web Watch labelled BonziBuddy as spyware, stating that it contains a backdoor trojan that collects information from users." My, how times have changed. These days that would be considered expected behavior.

tomatotomato37 7y ago
"The activities the program is said to engage in include constantly resetting the user's web browser homepage to bonzi.com without the user's permission, prompting and tracking various information about the user, and serving advertisements" My favorite quote, in that these activities are now essentially baked into Windows 10
- plotteddancer16 7y ago
  I’d categorize these activities as malware. Making unwanted mutable actions on my OS? Definitely malware...
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    By my current standards (which were totally mainstream in tech communities in the 90s) most modern non-FOSS software these days is malware. And some of the FOSS stuff is too, depending on what build you get.
- Causality1 7y ago
  Having just this morning had to turn Automatic Updates back off on my Windows 7 box and (for the third time) fix the gyro sensor driver Windows 10's updates keeps breaking on my laptop, I feel you.
asark 7y ago
Turns out there was so much money in spyware, spam, scummy ad sites, and so on, that the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those exact things. All those bad actors won the war. If you want to help run the show, or if you want those who do to shower money on you, those bad activities are what you do. Also Flash (in spirit if not in fact—thanks Javascript and modern web frontend development), popups, et c. In many ways all the worst things about the mid-period Web are thriving more now than they did then.
- nineteen999 7y ago
  > the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those exact things The marketing and management arms might have been the ones to make the decision to go "all-in", but it was the web developers who implemented it. Sure, a paycheck is a paycheck and all that, but let's not pretend that the developer community has clean hands in all this.
  - millzlane 7y ago
    let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives. Just like there are people out there willing to shoot you in the face for your wallet. There are people willing to write code to spy on you for a paycheck.
    - nineteen999 7y ago
      > let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives Not really, but then I work in emergency services infrastructure and every line of code in our product is intended to help first responders save lives. I agree with the rest of your comments though.
  - taurath 7y ago
    The developers and technical people who invented them are the ones who made much the money. Everyone I know who works in ad tech has gone through several acquisitions and is stinking rich - they tend to be on the more sociopathic side though. Just a correlation I’ve seen.
- coldpie 7y ago
  > Also Flash (in spirit if not in fact—thanks Javascript and modern web frontend development), popups, et c. Installing NoScript is the new "click to activate Flash." It's a bit of a pain, sure, but it makes the web so much more usable in general. And once you've whitelisted your day-to-day websites, it's almost invisible.
  - 7y ago
api 7y ago
The mobile revolution really boiled that frog. For some reason a change in form factor caused everything to completely forget about freedom, openness, and privacy, because ooh shiny.
- Razengan 7y ago
  > because ooh shiny. Because something that people carry all day every day, that follows them everywhere they go and sees almost everything they do, say and think.
flukus 7y ago
Another one from the era was alexa back when it was a toolbar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexa_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexa_Internet . What was once considered malware is now backed right into the browser. This is also why I have no trouble calling google a spyware company.

by warent 7y ago

tomatotomato37 7y ago

"The activities the program is said to engage in include constantly resetting the user's web browser homepage to bonzi.com without the user's permission, prompting and tracking various information about the user, and serving advertisements" My favorite quote, in that these activities are now essentially baked into Windows 10

plotteddancer16 7y ago
I’d categorize these activities as malware. Making unwanted mutable actions on my OS? Definitely malware...
- darkpuma 7y ago
  By my current standards (which were totally mainstream in tech communities in the 90s) most modern non-FOSS software these days is malware. And some of the FOSS stuff is too, depending on what build you get.
Causality1 7y ago
Having just this morning had to turn Automatic Updates back off on my Windows 7 box and (for the third time) fix the gyro sensor driver Windows 10's updates keeps breaking on my laptop, I feel you.

asark 7y ago

Turns out there was so much money in spyware, spam, scummy ad sites, and so on, that the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those exact things. All those bad actors won the war. If you want to help run the show, or if you want those who do to shower money on you, those bad activities are what you do. Also Flash (in spirit if not in fact—thanks Javascript and modern web frontend development), popups, et c. In many ways all the worst things about the mid-period Web are thriving more now than they did then.

nineteen999 7y ago
> the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those exact things The marketing and management arms might have been the ones to make the decision to go "all-in", but it was the web developers who implemented it. Sure, a paycheck is a paycheck and all that, but let's not pretend that the developer community has clean hands in all this.
- millzlane 7y ago
  let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives. Just like there are people out there willing to shoot you in the face for your wallet. There are people willing to write code to spy on you for a paycheck.
  - nineteen999 7y ago
    > let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives Not really, but then I work in emergency services infrastructure and every line of code in our product is intended to help first responders save lives. I agree with the rest of your comments though.
- taurath 7y ago
  The developers and technical people who invented them are the ones who made much the money. Everyone I know who works in ad tech has gone through several acquisitions and is stinking rich - they tend to be on the more sociopathic side though. Just a correlation I’ve seen.
coldpie 7y ago
> Also Flash (in spirit if not in fact—thanks Javascript and modern web frontend development), popups, et c. Installing NoScript is the new "click to activate Flash." It's a bit of a pain, sure, but it makes the web so much more usable in general. And once you've whitelisted your day-to-day websites, it's almost invisible.
- 7y ago

api 7y ago

The mobile revolution really boiled that frog. For some reason a change in form factor caused everything to completely forget about freedom, openness, and privacy, because ooh shiny.

Razengan 7y ago
> because ooh shiny. Because something that people carry all day every day, that follows them everywhere they go and sees almost everything they do, say and think.

flukus 7y ago

Another one from the era was alexa back when it was a toolbar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexa_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexa_Internet . What was once considered malware is now backed right into the browser. This is also why I have no trouble calling google a spyware company.