What Threats Do Bots Pose to Ecommerce Sites?

Ecommerce sites are increasingly targeted by bots, which pose a variety of threats ranging from inventory manipulation to data theft. Businesses concerned by these threats often implement countermeasures like CAPTCHAs.

CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing Tests) and CAPTCHA alternatives are used to differentiate between human users and bots.

Here are a few of the dangers that bots pose and some guidance on how security technology can help.

Credential stuffing 

Bots use stolen credentials (usernames and passwords) obtained from previous data breaches to attempt logins on ecommerce sites. Successful logins allow attackers to make unauthorized purchases, steal sensitive data, or commit fraud.

Credential stuffing leads to account takeovers, resulting in financial losses and data breaches. It also diminishes customer trust and can lead to increased support costs as customers seek to resolve fraudulent transactions.

DataDome, a CAPTCHA alternative, can help with credential stuffing bots. DataDome’s AI continuously learns and adapts to detect subtle patterns and behaviours associated with these bots. This proactive approach helps in identifying and blocking malicious activities before they can cause significant harm.

Price scraping

 Bots are used to scrape prices from ecommerce sites to gather competitive intelligence. Competitors can use this information to undercut prices, leading to price wars that erode profit margins.

Continuous price scraping can lead to a significant reduction in profit margins as businesses might feel compelled to lower prices to stay competitive. It also leads to increased server load and bandwidth consumption, driving up operational costs.

CAPTCHAs can be used on pages where sensitive data like prices are displayed. By requiring a CAPTCHA solution, ecommerce sites can deter bots from scraping prices. 

This measure can slow down or prevent bots from scraping data, although sophisticated bots with CAPTCHA-solving capabilities might still get through.

DataDome can help prevent price scraping through real-time defense and device fingerprinting. It can also implement rate limiting to stop high-volume requests typical of bots. DataDome also allows businesses to set specific rules to protect sensitive pricing data. DataDome also allows businesses to set specific rules to protect sensitive pricing data, ensuring that competitive information remains secure and the business remains viable.

Inventory Hoarding and Scalping 

Bots can rapidly purchase high-demand items as soon as they become available, depleting inventory and preventing legitimate customers from making purchases. Scalper bots often buy limited edition products to resell at inflated prices, disrupting the shopping experience and damaging brand reputation. 

Legitimate customers face frustration and disappointment, which can lead to a loss of trust and loyalty. The resale of products at higher prices also tarnishes the brand's image and may lead to negative publicity. These days, social media and other content sharing platforms mean that news of illicit business practices travels a lot faster than it once would have, and people all over the world can turn on a brand very quickly if they don’t meet their expectations.

CAPTCHAs and alternatives can be implemented on checkout pages to ensure that only human users can complete purchases. This prevents scalper bots from hoarding inventory and allows legitimate customers to buy products. 

While not foolproof, CAPTCHAs significantly reduce the ability of bots to automate purchases, thus protecting inventory and ensuring fair access to products. Integrating advanced AI-driven solutions like DataDome can further fortify defenses against inventory hoarding by recognizing and blocking bot-like purchase patterns.

Carding attacks

Bots use stolen credit card information to test the validity of card details by making small purchases on ecommerce sites. This practice, known as carding, can lead to fraudulent transactions and chargebacks.

Carding attacks result in financial losses due to chargebacks and increased transaction fees. They also harm the reputation of the ecommerce site, as customers may perceive it as insecure.

Content scraping 

Bots scrape content such as product descriptions, images, and reviews from ecommerce sites to populate other websites or for other malicious purposes.

This can lead to intellectual property theft and brand dilution, and can diminish the uniqueness of the ecommerce site’s offerings and damage its SEO ranking. It also results in higher server load and can slow down the site’s performance for legitimate users.

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks 

Bots can overwhelm ecommerce sites with a flood of requests, leading to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. This makes the site unavailable to legitimate users, resulting in lost sales and damaged reputation.

DoS attacks can result in significant downtime, lost revenue, and a negative impact on customer trust and brand reputation. They also necessitate additional costs for mitigation and recovery efforts. Implementing robust security measures, including firewalls and load balancers, can help mitigate the impact of such attacks and ensure continuous site availability.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, ecommerce sites must stay vigilant and proactive in combating bot threats. Employing a combination of CAPTCHAs, advanced AI-driven security solutions like DataDome, and other multi-layered defense mechanisms can significantly reduce the risks posed by malicious bots, protecting both the business and its customers.