As BONZI.COM Software put it, “He will explore the Internet with you as your very own friend and sidekick! He can talk, walk, joke, browse, search, e-mail and download like no other friend you’ve ever had!” He was also a double agent: From then on, whenever Pierce surfed the Web, his cartoon companion and a handful of other programs bundled with KaZaA would quietly transmit records of his behavior back to third-party servers.
“But instead I also got this other program, and very soon I had a talking monkey running around my screen. “I did a custom download and only elected to get KaZaA,” he said. So after carefully downloading KaZaA - the most popular file-sharing program on the Web with 90 million copies requested so far this year - Pierce was not amused when his new BonziBUDDY showed up, too.
Years of heavy Internet use have taught him to read the fine print most consumers ignore when they install free programs on their PCs. Free Software is the Lure, Online Surveillance is the RealityĮliot Pierce, a product manager for a large online media company, scours the World Wide Web each day for music files, games and flashy new freeware utilities.
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