On October 11th, 2009, an entry for BonziBuddy was created on the Malware Wiki. On July 20th, YouTuber SuperMario157 uploaded a video titled 'Bonzi Buddy Speaks,' featuring a text-to-speech voice portraying the BonziBuddy gorilla as a sexually deviant computer program (shown below). On April 16th, 2007, PC World published a list titled 'The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products,' which ranked BonziBuddy as #6 of all time. On August 3rd, 2003, Urban Dictionary user Joe submitted an entry for 'Bonzi Buddy,' referring to it as a 'stupid spyware program.' On September 15th, 2006, PC World listed BonziBuddy as the 8th worst website on the Internet. Several updated iterations of the adware were released by Bonzi Software until 2004, when the Federal Trade Commission ordered the company to pay $75,000 in fines for violating the Children's Online Privacy Act. In addition to adding the BonziBuddy purple monkey assistant, the software would install new search bars to the user's web browsers without their consent.

BonziBuddy was initially released by the company Bonzi Software in 2000 on the website.