A new study claims threat actors are really arising with full force and that’s when they were seen attacking the famous Amazon Prime Day that arose during the mid of this month.
The report comes to us thanks to CHEQ which carried out an analysis of visitors that made it to the platform of e-commerce when Amazon Prime Week was in full swing. Around 6 million visitors arose and they saw about 18% of traffic coming from the likes of bots and fake users.
The firm alleged that fake form of traffic is not something new but a reality that retailers must deal with all year round. So many of these bot handlers are continuously trying to grab a hold of the most famous items during sale season and then go about reselling them through illegal means.
The news is even more worrying as we’re coming close to the holiday season and this is where experts are predicting that figures linked to bots will rise dramatically with estimated figures bound to reach the 46 million mark for shoppers when Black Friday comes. So many are going to be fake users and they could well be draining people’s budgets, carrying out malicious activities, and also clicking on frequent ads that are seen online.
Such behavior would be more commonly observed on paid platforms for searches, ads on social media, and different types of ads for text and display, the firm continued.
In case you didn’t already know, most purchases done online start with organic searches and aren’t paid by bot traffic on e-commerce platforms. This usually undergoes an increase when the shopping holiday arises.
Moreover, you’ll find invalid traffic taking up a staggering amount of advertising budgets that were dedicated originally to making revenue through legitimate users. Remember, after ads get put forward to fake and bot accounts, this chunk of the budget goes down the drain as waste.
CHEQ mentioned how stakeholders like retailers may end up with losses reaching $368 million thanks to fraud clicks on Black Friday only.
Then we’ve got brands estimated to lose out on $3.3 billion thanks to fake accounts abandoning their carts. You’ll notice that most shoppers tend to alter their minds after searching for the same item that can be found at better price tags in other places.
This just adds misery as it messes up metrics, holds up the inventory, and really overwhelms people across the board. But users are also affected as it becomes harder for them to conduct the process of shopping during such mega-sale events.
In 2021, bots comprised 35% of visitors on such platforms and now, with more sophistication in their dealings, we’re expecting a greater increase in proxy users, fake accounts, and botnets, among others.
Illustration: freepik
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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World
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