Consumers are forced to choose between paying higher prices or buying bots.
Nearly half the respondents to an online survey on buying trends conducted by Osterman Research Bot detection and response firms Netacea Bots are preventing shoppers from buying in-demand products and services online.
Many individuals experienced high levels in interference, especially those who attempted to buy tickets for live events or fashion items, consumer products, and travel.
Researchers have found that bot activity has a variety of negative effects on the buying habits of consumers. In response, some consumers are adding bots as part of their toolkit.
Bots are affecting consumer choices in a big way
Gen Z and millennials are the most likely to use a scaler, with 25% of them admitting that they have used one in the past 12 months. Even older shoppers claim to use bots in order to get the products they want.
Bot-induced scarcity results in significant markups for everyday items. Even though inflation is on the rise, people will pay 13% to 17 % more to scalpers for items like household goods and medicines. They are also willing to spend extra money for event tickets.
Over 90% of buyers feared they were being sold fakes, or that their data would be compromised, despite these high prices.
The report, entitled “How are bots affecting buyer behavior?” Over a thousand Americans who buy popular products and services online were surveyed.
Automatism is now a part of public consciousness. It is a barrier for consumers to enter the market. scalper botsBec McKeown – cyberpsychologist and founder at Mind Science.
In essence, this creates a confirmation bias in which bot users always see the positive side of their actions.
“They believe that nobody will suffer any harm. She said that it’s easy to let this happen with the internet, as people’s morals and principles are thrown out the window because the consequences don’t seem obvious.
Lackluster Laws No Deterrent
The Better Online Ticket Sales Act aims at restricting bots’ use by banning the purchase of tickets through circumventing security features. This act imposes fines that can reach up to $16,000.
The proposed Stopping Grinch Bots Act seeks to expand this deterrent to include bots that purchase goods during the holidays.
In a survey, respondents said that they agreed that action was needed. It is clear that more measures are required. 89% of respondents said retailers should take action and 82% wanted government policy.
The BOTS Act prohibits the use of bots for large-scale ticket purchases and resale in the U.S. He noted that, in most cases, however, use of the technology is not restricted, but only the act itself.
“Bots that abuse credentials are illegal. But those who scrape inventory fall under a new area of law.” Retailers have to try to ban attacks with terms and condition, but this can be difficult since bots swap IP addresses so they appear as someone else.
Reactionary response building
Even added that consumers see the growing problem as a result of a shared responsibility between the government, retail, and the brands behind goods and tickets.
Bots are becoming more and more popular, so the whine of consumer dissatisfaction has turned into a roar. Politicians have listened to this and are becoming more proactive.
As an example, the hearings held by the U.S. Congress in response to the Taylor Swift incident with the ticket are instructive. The subject has also been raised at Prime Ministers’ Question Time in Britain.
Still notes that some debates over AI regulation, including those around the EU AI Act are centered on whether bots should be classified as AI systems.
“Specific antibot regulation could help repair some consumer harms.” To make this happen, he said, “we need to be more aware of the harm that bots cause real people.”
Many people are affected by these issues in fragmented and less dramatic ways than they would be if it were a large-scale event such as a ransomware. This is why many of them get swept beneath the rug.
Still urged policymakers to take action.
The complexity of implementing anti-bot measures
Solving the bot issue for e-tailers may be easier said than accomplished. How to effectively implement legislation poses many challenges.
You can punish either the person purchasing the ticket (if it was obtained illegally) or the act itself of using the ticket. How would you enforce it? Does the seller have to enforce this?
The fans who are forced to pay inflated ticket prices for the sake of a fandom are not only the perpetrators, but also the victims. Still suggests that they are the ones who drive the secondary market, and may be complicit in helping bots to bypass laws.
As a fallback, you could warn the public about the need for controls to be imposed on shopping bots. If public opinion about the use of technology by shoppers does not change, it may be easier to impose penalties on consumers who are caught using bots.
She told the E-Commerce Times that “human beings are disinclined by nature to pay attention to things they don’t find relevant.”
Researchers have found that “inoculation” training, which focuses more on the content of scams than abstract information can increase awareness and trust without reducing it in legitimate communications.
Pre-bunking is another inoculation technique (as opposed debunking!) The method works by giving people real-life experience of spotting scams. They will be more prepared when they see it in the real world, she said.
Human Psychology Works Against Deterrent
According to McKeown, it’s difficult to determine if certain groups of people or age categories are more vulnerable than others. This is due to the way vulnerability is measured.
“People don’t always report that they are scam victims, and it is impossible to know how many failed attempts were made before a fraudster hit the jackpot.” She told E-Commerce Times that victim blaming made it more difficult to obtain accurate data.
“Correlation does not equal causality.” She advised that these results should be treated with caution.
Unconscious brain processes are often responsible for the desire to purchase certain products or tickets that are in high demand. She noted that this happens in our brains while making decisions and that the report addresses these factors.
Our desire for instant gratification clouds our judgement. We would be able to make more rational decisions if the immediate gratification was taken away. “This psychological explanation lends more weight to the idea that bots should be banned through legislation,” she noted.
Old Bot Tactics are only getting worse
Still claims that bots are a major problem in the ecommerce industry. According to an FBI indictment for example, one of the first wholesale ticket scalpers has been active since 2001.
The bots are far more sophisticated now. “Bots have become more sophisticated and are able to evade the technology put in place by Still.
By using bots to imitate humans, bots can fool legacy controls. They can then bypass security measures such as Captcha in order to empty digital shelves in mass. He warned this issue would only get worse as automation advances.
Bots are also much easier to use. It is no longer necessary to have technical proficiency in order to run complex scripts. He explained that the software and services are easily accessible without having to visit the dark web.
These bots can not only handle the requests necessary to execute the transaction, but they also have access to distributed proxy networks that make the source of the request look genuine and execute code in order to bypass legacy detection.
Tor is an internet browser that masks your IP and browsing history by redirecting all web traffic via a network of routers, or nodes.
Protecting Against Bot Shopping Attacks
It may be difficult for consumers to defend themselves against these bots that steal inventory. Consumers have a difficult time because the attacks are aimed primarily at large online companies’ external attack surfaces.
Still stated that there are few technical solutions available.
He suggested that to avoid the harmful effects of scalper bots people should refuse to pay high prices. Bots can also be used to gain access to accounts in high numbers by stealing consumer credentials.
He advised people to practice good password hygiene so that their information is not stolen.
It may be that the only way to stop this trend is for shoppers to become more willing themselves. The logic behind this new trend is “If you can’t beat them join them”.
There is also an understanding that you might have to use the secondary market for items with limited availability. The demand for these items increases, and the prices follow. “It becomes a spiral,” Still said.