Bad actors don’t have bots stop at putting products in online shopping carts. They’ll use bots to validate stolen credit card information. Cashing out bots then buy the products reserved by scalping or denial of inventory bots.

Notably, a staggering 65% of web traffic in e-commerce is attributed to bad bots. The percentage of traffic by industry that comes from bad bots: Between Q1 2023 and Q2 2023, intelligent bot traffic experienced a nearly fourfold increase.

Probably the most well-known type of ecommerce bot, scalping bots use unfair methods to get limited-availability and/or preferred goods or services. Sometimes instead of creating new accounts from scratch, bad actors use bots to access other shopper’s accounts.

Using shopping bots, bad actors collect and resell digital coupons and discount codes, which can directly impede business revenue streams, cause disruptions in sales and undermine the effectiveness of these promotional tools.