SMG3 comes in, wanting to use the bathroom, and kicks the door that makes Bonzi Buddy fly out. He appears in the flashback, talking to Hank Hill at the Starbucks in the Internet Graveyard. He is a purple monkey that has typical characteristics of a Monkey. Spyware Guide's entry on the program also states that it is adware. Trend Micro and Symantec have both classified the software as adware. 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, installing a toolbar, and serving advertisements. 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.
It is often referred to in some software as Adult Male #2.Ī number of sources identify BonziBuddy as spyware, a claim the company disputed. The voice was called Sydney and taken from an old Lernout & Hauspie Microsoft Speech API 4.0 package. The program also used a text-to-speech voice to interact with the user.
Later versions of BonziBuddy in May 2000 featured its own character: Bonzi, the purple gorilla. The software used Microsoft Agent technology similar to Office Assistant, and originally sported Peedy, a green parrot and one of the characters available with Microsoft Agent.
