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Bots Compose 42% of Overall Web Traffic; Nearly Two-Thirds Are Malicious, Reports Akamai
Undetected web scraping bots severely impact ecommerce CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the cloud
About this update from Akamai Technologies, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"Undetected web scraping bots severely impact ecommerce\nCAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the cloud company that powers and protects life online, today released a new State of the Internet (SOTI) report that details the security and business threats that organizations face with the proliferation of web scraping bots. Scraping Away Your Bottom Line: How Web Scrapers Impact Ecommerce finds that bots compose 42% of overall web traffic, and 65% of these bots are malicious.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nWith its reliance on revenue-generating web applications, the ecommerce sector has been most affected by high-risk bot traffic. Although some bots are beneficial to business, web scraper bots are being used for competitive intelligence and espionage, inventory hoarding, imposter site creation, and other schemes that have a negative impact on both the bottom line and the customer experience. There are no existing laws that prohibit the use of scraper bots, and they are hard to detect due to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) botnets, but there are some things companies can do to mitigate them.\n\"Bots continue to present massive challenges resulting in multiple pain points for app and API owners,\" said Patrick Sullivan, CTO, Security Strategy at Akamai. \"This includes scraping that can steal web data and produce brand impersonation sites. The scraper landscape is also changing due to advancements like headless browser technology, requiring organizations to take an approach to managing this type of bot activity that is more sophisticated than other JavaScript-based mitigations.\"\n Key findings from the report include:\nAI botnets have the ability to discover and scrape unstructured data and content that is in a less consistent format or location. Additionally, they can use actual business intelligence to enhance the decision-making process through collecting, extracting, and then processing data.Scraper bots can be leveraged to generate more sophisticated phishing campaigns by grabbing product images, descriptions, and pricing information to create counterfeit storefronts or phishing sites aimed at stealing credentials or credit card information.Bots can be used to facilitate new account opening abuse — which, according to recent research, composes up to 50% of fraud losses.Te...