BonziBuddy Advertisement on Neo

[hi23]

Omg, I hate that thing so much... It destroyed my last comp.. that stupid purple gorilla... and now neo is advertising him!!! theres millions of little kids that are gonna see that little cute gorilla and wanna download him and destroy there comps lol... its spyware 2... but mabye thats why they put the advert on there... little kids are gonna be more prone to click on it... i dont mind the adverts but they should at least be a little more careful and see what there actually advertising.. i have a screenshot if no one believes me anyone here ever download/hear of bonzi?

lol, look up "bonzibuddy hell" on google and c what u find

[Eluthia]

I've heard about bonzibuddy. Neo should get rid of it, but a bunch of the other ads are probably just as likely to load your comp with spyware if you click on them.

You know, sad to say but if I were a parent I wouldn't let my kids play Neo unless I had one heck of a firewall. And even then, maybe not. After all, who else but kids, people who aren't familiar with the internet, and those who are really gullible and/or strongly attracted to Shiny Things would ever click on those ads? "YOU'VE WON $1 MILLION!!!"

[Pantaliamon]

I do not like the Bonzi Buddy! I had him on one of my computers several years ago... sheesh. Getting rid of him was a pain in the, uh, neck. I found a rather fitting description of him but I can't post it on here.

I suppose that advertisement isn't "inappropriate" so it can't be removed, but it kills me to think of kids seeing, "Oh, how cute, a little purple monkey" and downloading a ton of spyware.

[Butterflyhornet]

I saw that ad too. My mom had one of those. She thought oh so cute, until I kept poking her saying its spywhere. I mean I didn't even have to read anything or look up any info about it. I just knew. Something about the description and purpose sounded fishy.

She was like, "well the cute little guy does turn away and cover its eyes when I type a password, and look I can feed him bananas"


I was like, "That still doesn't stop the rest of the program from recording your passwords."

And I think she did more research on it and soon she said good bye to it and uninstalled and cleared it and the rest of the program off her computer.

[everconfused]

I hate the ads, that's no big surprise or secret (like most of us, including Adam).

Now, I just changed from dial up to dsl (huge problems, but that's another topic) ... anyway, I wanted to "test drive" the dsl so went to Neo on my lab (non-premium) account. I had already done scans so my system was clean. What I hadn't done was get the firewall yet (DUH, I know). Anyway, ended up with 2 driveby (I never click on anything) cursor and some weird math font spyware things (comet cursors/Math ... something, don't remember now) and Neo was the ONLY site I tried out. Scanned after I went to the site and there they were. That they got past spybot, ad-aware and spywareblaster amazes me.

If I were a parent of a young one, I don't know that I'd let them on the site without me sitting right there either. Some of those ads are just to tempting with their bright colors, etc. for sometone who doesn't know better to click on.

[DM was on fire!]

DSL is the reason I'm on dial up, EC! XD My router fizzled out.

All BonzaiBuddy is is a walking piece of purple spyware. I miss the green parrot though. He tap danced. He just caused the computer a lot of trouble.

Or was it the fact it was a E-Machine? o__O

[Chrisodeo]

If you see something that's spyware, report it. Reporting isn't just for offensive material, it's for anything TNT said wouldn't be on the site. This includes spyware and any malware. Bonzibuddy is almost as bad as Gator, which I wouldn't doubt has also found its way into the Neopets system. I know there have to be ads, but this is rediculous. Someone really needs to say something to whatever ad companies are in charge of choosing ads for the site. If we keep letting things like this slide, they're going to walk all over us.

[AFI_Sorrow]

Ugh I remember that evil purple monkey. My brother downloaded it and bleh...my computer wasn't the same for a long time.
If it's spyware, it does need to be reported. Anything harmful should be reported, but sadly, a lot of ads on Neopets are harmful.

[imre]

just block off google adsense using adblocker in firefox

[_B4U_]

Omg, I hate that thing so much... It destroyed my last comp.. that stupid purple gorilla... and now neo is advertising him!!! theres millions of little kids that are gonna see that little cute gorilla and wanna download him and destroy there comps lol... its spyware 2... but mabye thats why they put the advert on there... little kids are gonna be more prone to click on it... i dont mind the adverts but they should at least be a little more careful and see what there actually advertising.. i have a screenshot if no one believes me anyone here ever download/hear of bonzi?

lol, look up "bonzibuddy hell" on google and c what u find

_B4U_ says: "BonziBuddy is a major pain. But BonziBuddy doesn't even come close to being as much of a pain as 'chatspeak' is. Please remember that we speak English here on earth, not the language of some strange alien planet."

This is PPT, not the Neoboards. As for the advertisement, I'm not surprised it showed up.

[Runevalkyrie]

_B4U_ says: "BonziBuddy is a major pain. But BonziBuddy doesn't even come close to being as much of a pain as 'chatspeak' is. Please remember that we speak English here on earth, not the language of some strange alien planet."

This is PPT, not the Neoboards. As for the advertisement, I'm not surprised it showed up.

Might I remind you it's not your job to criticize if they use chatspeak. Sure it can be irritating, but refering it to an "alien language" is beyond being inappropiate.

[Caution_Cute]

:lol: DSL is the reason I'm on dial up, EC! XD My router fizzled out.

All BonzaiBuddy is is a walking piece of purple spyware. I miss the green parrot though. He tap danced. He just caused the computer a lot of trouble.

Or was it the fact it was a E-Machine? o__O

Yes, it was the emachine. Only emachine...... nothing else is bad, nothing else can get viruses or spyware.... just emachines and windows me..... LoL Just kidding.... I think. Bonzi Buddy Was cute. until my puter died after installing it. Besides the normal daily or thrice daily restore that is expected or I should say standard of/for Windows ME, it made me do it one more time! All those cursor thingies, net buddies and email smilies are bad news.

[allnameswereout]

"Cute"? Its spyware. Not sure what it exactly does anymore but its commonly known as spyware. If you have it installed get yourself AdAware, Spyware S&D, Microsoft AntiSpyware (formerly GIANT AntiSpyware) and begone w/the Evil ape. Spyware; not your "cute" friend! Also, i recommend prevention instead of curing hence i suggest to take additional precautions than merely removing spyware. Software described above as well as Lavasoft Reg-Hance (available from same website as AdAware link), checking/changing settings at Config Screen -> Internet Options -> Security & Privacy are among avail options.

PS: Informative website to cure & protect: http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm

Last edited by allnameswereout on Sat Nov 19, 2005 4:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

[autechre]

i guess i should hug my adblocker and firewall more often, there should be warnings about this, because if kids think they can play the site, they often infer everything on the site is safe, and get into a fair bit of trouble..

and the problem is, its the ones who get it, who might not know how to get rid of it.. -.-

and the google ads are annoying, its really ad overload, went to uni the other day and they don't have the firewall and adblockers, and it was really annoying, so i stopped even though it was faster (i have dialup at home)

[stampsyne]

I actually have a tingle of regret that I never see the ads because I use adblock. *shutter* Ok, the tingle is gone.