Scalper bots, or inventory hoarding bots, are used to disrupt, manipulate, and steal merchandise much faster than any human can. These malicious bots add products to carts, often products that are in high demand or limited supply. This stock is held in a basket and made unavailable to other prospective buyers. Scalper bots perform this process multiple times, causing significant problems for websites and retailers, by hijacking inventory and reselling the items at a higher price.

Major eCommerce businesses experienced technical difficulties on their websites during Black Friday 2019. And this isn’t something retailers can afford, when Black Friday is traditionally the day retailers roll out their biggest online discounts. As Black Friday approaches, many websites will see a spike in traffic which means an increase in bot activity. Are bots hiding in your holiday traffic?

So far in our blog series, we have discovered that there is a high understanding of the threats that bots cause across all industries. We recently carried out a survey of 200 UK enterprises across e-Commerce, financial services, entertainment and travel. In part three of our blog series, we discussed how bots are affecting different industries. There is very little need to explain to businesses that bots can be a problem.

We recently carried out a survey of 200 UK enterprises across e-Commerce, financial services, entertainment and travel. In part two of our blog series, we discussed the current state of bot attacks. As we continue our blog series, we investigate how bots are affecting different industries. We surveyed enterprises in the industries we saw as the most at risk.