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Class Action Filed Against Bonzi Software
An anonymous reader writes: "A nationwide class action lawsuit was filed on November 25, 2002, in the Superior Court of Spokane County against Bonzi Software, Inc. Bonzi is among the world's most prolific issuers of internet advertising banners. Bonzi's website has been ranked as one of the most frequently visited websites in the world. In case you are wondering Bonzi is the company responsible for those irritating popup ads which say things like 'Your computer is broadcasting an internet IP Address...' and 'Your internet connection is not optimized ...'" The attacking lawyers provide some samples of the ads they say are misleading.
I always hated those ads. Not because I ever clicked on one. But they made me think, if my mom saw one of those, she'd think it was a Windows message and click the Ok button.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
That's the problem is so many people think it's a great thing, and so they install it only to wonder why they're system's messed up later on.
I vote we just declare open season on these guys.
*looks around for LART*
You mean, an ad that's shaped exactly like the widget set for the most widely installed OS in the world is misleading, just because it makes people think they're clicking on a native os dialog? THAT'S CRAZY!
Seriously though, this is exactly what suing is for...making companies pay when they cross the line. Now if we can just get those misleading domain renewal notice companies strung up...
It's hard enough to get my mom to use Yahoo. These windows error like popups make it even harder.
Why hasn't Microsoft gone after them for using the likeness of Windows(TM)?
I've long been tempted to ask the UK Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) to investigate those banners.
I've lost count of the number of support calls both at work and from friends at home relating to them.
They are designed to be confused with genuine windows messages, rather than adverts, they are designed to install fear and confusion into the standard user, basically they are deliberately misleading and scaremongering adverts, which are illegal in the UK.
I hope Bonzi are bankrupted over this case.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
He's so cute, he can speak and sing songs while you're trying to code, and help you in your internet searches by reporting everything you do.
Who needs friends when you can have a BonziBuddy?
True warriors use the Klingon Google
I don't know how many time I've had to deal with a customer calling up demanding to know why we are broacasitng their IP address to hackers. Not to mention stupid employees installing bonzi buddy all over their companies servers.. guess who gets to clean that cerap up? The tech, thankfully, not me..
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
It said I was broadcasting the IP address 243.65.42.656
It's almost as though they think we're retarded...
Is it just me, or does it seem that this is being done more as a source of income for the Lawyers, than an actual "lets remove the scurge" activity.
The big winners from this exercise will be the lawyers, surely?? And what about people who have been bamboozled who do not live in the USofA?
If they really wanted a killer example, they would show the one that says "You have a message waiting". It made it look like, indeed, you had an extremely urgent message waiting. I never did know what it led to, I never fell for it, but I can distinctly remember my mom asking me why she couldn't get the message she had waiting, and why she just got bombarded with ads. It's good that someone is finially doing something about it.
plz see definition #2 below...
www.m-w.com
Main Entry: hijack
Pronunciation: 'hI-"jak
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1923
1 a : to steal by stopping a vehicle on the
highway b : to commandeer (a flying airplane)
especially by coercing the pilot at gunpoint
c : to stop and steal from (a vehicle in
transit) d : KIDNAP
2 a : to steal or rob as if by hijacking b : to
subject to extortion or swindling
- hijack noun
- hijacker noun
So yeah...if you wanna get technical, it IS "to subject to extortion or swindling"....and thus hijacking.
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
Does anyone remember the early porn banners that were doing this?
"Movie downloading?"
You know that something is low and bad (tm) when even the porn industry shys away from it as a form of advertising. I was surprised when I started seeing these because it harked back to earlier days of those annoying porn ads that tried to look like UI components.
I guess bonzi didn't quite catch on -- and quite frankly, its about fscking time that someone finally said, "You're obnoxious, annoying, and we've had enough!"
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
www.goat.. ah screw it.
"But really, let's admit to it, the creativeness required to think up faking an error screen to get users to click on it (think reaction vs. action) is genius. I'm not sure this suit has any merit at all...and even if it does it really shouldn't."
What on earth does this mean? If the suit has merit, that means that the advertising was both deceptive and harmful. I admire a good grifter as much as the next guy, but these people are still thieves (or perhaps vandals) and that kind of shst ought to be against the law. Nor are laws against fraud the sort of bad laws (like, say, the DMCA) where a bit of civil disobedience is tolerable. There are three reasons that fraud like this (Bonzi Schemes, if you'll excuse the pun) should be illegal:
1. Harm to end users. Whether it's lost time, lost money, spyware-infested PCs, or just a general devaluation of warning messages (making their computer cry wolf...) the results are harmful for users.
2. Harm to the market. When users are confused about whether something is an advertisement, they make decisions on bad information. This rewards the wrong sort of economic behavior -- the company that can best trick people wins instead of the company with the best product.
3. Harm to society. We don't want our best and brightest to believe that the easiest way to get ahead is to steal or hurt other people. We would like them to go into productive activities that generate new wealth, not unethical and deceptive practices that siphon off wealth from others.
So yeah, if the suit has merit then it should have merit. This is exactly the kind of thing that users, the market, and society as a whole need a good set of laws to handle.
Make cheese not war 8:)
I'm going to log it in my firewall, then join the lawsuit, with my logs as proof that I was deceived by these scoundrels.
You want to show them you logged them on your own firewall (probably self installed, running a hard-core version of Linux like Slackware or something similar non-intuitive), and then you fell for their stupid trick of Windows-lookalike silly error messages?
Like this:
Your honour, I tracked down their IP address using tools like nslookup and dig, entered it into my self-installed firewall running Linux using iptables, marking those packets and sending them to metalog (which if I may add, beats sysklogd hands down), so I have a proof that I fell for their ad. Here is my printout of my Gnome desktop (made with xwd and xwud and gimp just because I can). They deceived me! See!Reading your comments again, I wonder if maybe you were being sarcastic...But you're saying that the scourge of deceptive popup ads is laudable because it represents some sort of "innovation in business?"
:)
.NET ads here on Slashdot. They make me chuckle.
You work for Microsoft, don't you?
Yeah, Enron's accounting methods were very "innovative" as well. And I have a novel new take on "beach front property" for sale in Nevada.
Ihe ads in question, which I see constantly as I visit the crappy sites I for some reason go to, are *deceptive*. Like others have said, the popups are designed to look like a Windows dialog box, and trick teh n00bs into clicking them.
When you're looking at a magazine or newspaper, the ads that sorta look like articles are clearly labelled ADVERTISEMENT across the top. Sometimes in magazines you get a whole eight pages of advertising "streamed" with the regular content, but it's definitely identifiable and identified as advertising. Those "Click here to optimize your Internet connection" fakey dialogboxes are intended to decieve.
I'm actually kinda surprised Microsoft hasn't done anything about this (of course, maybe that's what the article says. I didn't read it, and I'm not going to. Nyeah.)
It's really funny, too, how pop-ups have changed over time. Soon we are going to see a lot more of the default Windows XP "clue-free blue" motif in those ads as everyone buys new computers. Really, they ought to be putting these popups in a time capsule, and in 20 years we can all laugh about the good old days with our friends we keep in touch with, thanks to ClassMates.com.
And in conclusion, I actually do hate everything that has anything to do with advertisement on the Internet. Except I kinda like the
Well, the solution is easy. Download Mozilla 1.2 and when you see one of those pesky banners, right click it and select "Block images from this Server". Your bandwith is reduced and your eyes get a rest.
Am I the only person that thinks this is funny? I torture the crap out of our IS guys with it. We'll be getting to the end of a marathon meeting and I'll ask them if they finally stopped broadcasting our IP addresses for just anyone to see and connect to.
I think they're getting back at me with some weird HTTP proxy filter. For some reason, when I go to Slashdot, I see every story twice.
I can just see a server running your suggestion now:
"Hmmm. Mozilla on Linux. Crap! what theme is he running. Well, I can guess it's not KDE, since he's not running Konq. But is he running Sawfish, Blackbox, or TWM95? Crux, or one of those themes from Bowie Poag?
Screw it - he's probably blocking me anyway."
www.eFax.com are spammers
Actually, while I'm here, regarding the "Your Internet Connection is Not Optimized" message, does their software include features to disable seeing this popup once it's installed?
If you install their software and still get the "....Not Optimized" popup, then I think the lawsuit deserves to, and will, succeed.
One problem I've been wondering about with most Windows browsers (not sure about Netscape, I haven't trusted them since 4.x, and it's tendacy to completely nuke Win9x with every error): Bonzi, and CometCursor both pop up an ActiveX prompt asking if I want to install their spyware.
My question is pretty simple, why is it that the ActiveX prompt has a checkbox for "Always trust software from such and such", but none for "Never trust software from such and such", or at least a "Never ask me again" checkbox? This just strikes me as remarkably stupid. Especially since there's a lot of cleaning up one would have to do if anyone makes the mistake of checking off the "Always trust" box, when prompted to install spyware into their browser.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Do you have a domain registered through NetSol? Have you paid your $960 advertising fee to that company yet? You know the one, it sends out an invoice once a year or so.
When I got it, I knew it was bogus (it said my ad would list me under gas stations or something like that), but it also looked like any of the other invoices my small business dealt with. Anyone not intimately familiar with my business dealings would probably have paid it without a second thought. It's only after you carefully read the entire document that you see very small print admitting that it was a solicitation, not part of an ongoing contract... although once you fall for the scam once you'll get real invoices for years.
In that case the issue isn't whether or not they can create business directories and a kilobuck for the entry. It's that their ads are literally indistiguishable from invoices without careful study or intimate knowledge of the particulars.
It the same thing with Bozo Software. The issue isn't so much the product they offer, it's the fact that their advertising is deliberately designed to be look like legitimate system messages. They stand out on Linux boxes, but on a Windows box they can fool even experienced people who don't exercise extraordinary care.
The content of the messages also tend to be deceptive. As others have pointed out, "broadcasting your IP address" is a term of art, popup ads are incapable of checking IP stack performance, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken