Automated bots are prevalent on the internet, performing various tasks, both helpful and harmful.
According to Arkose Labs, 73% of internet traffic measured between January and September 2023 was related to malicious bot activities.
The top five bad bot categories in Q3 were account takeover, scraping, fake account creation, account management, and in-product abuse.
SMS toll fraud experienced a significant quarter-over-quarter increase of 2,141% in Q3.
Attacks on customer support call centers increased by 160%, and scraping saw a 432% increase from Q1 to Q2.
Intelligent bot attacks rose by 291% from Q1 to Q2, with machine learning and AI mimicking human behavior.
The rise in bad bot attacks suggests profitability for cybercriminals, and AI may exacerbate the issue.
Going after the financial incentive is seen as a potential solution to mitigate bad bot activity.
Not all bots are malicious; some serve helpful purposes such as indexing websites, customer service, and managing social media experiences.
Many useful bots exist, performing tasks like website indexing and customer service.Highlighting the dual nature of bots on the Internet.