He looked like a friendly assistant, he was a spy with a smile: the story of BonziBuddy, the camouflaged Windows spyware

If you used a computer in the late 90s or early 2000s, you probably remember Clippy in Office 97 or Rover, the animated dog that appeared in the Windows XP search engine. Those were the days of friendly, colorful, slightly clumsy, and generally harmless virtual assistants. But not all of them had the same intentions.