Interesting article on how Click Frenzy and Power Retail tracked down someone creating bots to buy high demand items.
https://edm.powerretail.com.au/news/exclusive-sneakerbot-net…
What are some strategies businesses can use to stop this happening?
Article on bots purchasing high demand items
ozbd on 27/11/2020 - 17:19
Comments
They can add CAPTCHA at check out. Won't stop all the bots, and it'll annoy everyone else, but might work.
Bots can answer CAPTCHA's faster than humans.
CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA is used to train AI. The more they're used the more data is collect and feed to the AI which makes bots even "smarter" and faster.
If Business don't like it they shouldn't sell Toilet Paper online. lol
If people are stupid enough to pay a premium for items they don't need and couldn't buy, then someone deserves to make money of it.
This. If people didn't pay the inflated prices, no one would bother doing this. But people are so desperate to have the latest and greatest, they'll pay anything.
I'd love to have an online shop where bots buy everything the moment I put it up.
- Hire thousands of ex google people
- or have plenty of supply.
nice try OP - r u an employee of said companies?
01 Dec 2017
Why do you think a business wants to stop bots?
If the (people behind the) bots pay, and money is made, why invest money to make it harder to make money? Not logical business plan…
There is a reason some times.
Popular items typically have stock allocations. The distributors and retailers know that the item will sell like hot cakes, it is guaranteed profit but if the distributor only allocates all the stock to their favourite retailer, the other retailers wouldn't the other less lucrative lines off them.
This means the retailer also has limited stock. The are also operating on the model that some consumers will not buy from them if they are perpetually OOS of popular lines.
So it is in the interest of all parties except scalpers to ensure that stock is available to end consumers.
Having said that, the items being discussed are far from necessities and runs on hype so in this specific scenario, the easiest and best solution is to not buy said items if it is unavailable from a retailer.
Tell your children to lrean to code and they'll never work a single day in their life.
Sneaker bots have been doing it for AGES. Pretty much zero hope for a lot of releases but some stores have been implementing random questions like “what colour is the change rooms at the store” as a verification