With each major shopping holiday — be it Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, or the holiday season — millions of people flock online to find deals and gifts for loved ones. But there’s something else that seizes the opportunity during these e-commerce booms: bot traffic. As gift-giving holidays become bigger online shopping events each year, the surge in web traffic during these times can easily mask the presence of harmful bots programmed to exploit vulnerabilities and disrupt operations.

Having just finalized the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping block and heading to the holiday season at breakneck speed, we thought of deep diving into this topic.

One study found that during Q4 of 2022, bot attacks accounted for 98% of malicious activity on e-commerce platforms, targeting industries like clothing, electronics, and limited-edition merchandise. Bots can mimic human behavior to bypass traditional defenses, causing billions in lost revenue, increased infrastructure costs, and a negative impact on customer trust. 

As consumers rush to websites to nab the latest deal, scalpers can also emerge to hoard products or bots can flood sites, driving up costs for site owners. An Arkose Labs report talks about how malicious bots exploit e-commerce systems during peak shopping periods. These “Grinch bots” rapidly purchase limited-edition or high-demand items, leading to inventory shortages, frustrated customers, and financial losses for retailers. Additionally, “freebie bots” exploit promotions, causing operational inefficiencies and inventory depletion.

These bots pose significant risks to shoppers and corporations as well, disrupting business continuity, including data theft, DDoS attacks, and account takeovers. 

Important dates tend to be overlooked as website traffic threats until the consequences make protective measures impossible to ignore. With automation and AI evolving at a quick pace and malicious bots taking on more human characteristics by the minute, the stealthiness of these threats will be significantly higher and its consequences more frequent and devastating. It is important to prepare your website for shopping holidays ahead of the actual day by increasing traffic security and ensuring that your website serves only real consumers. 

By putting a trusted web traffic security solution in place, you can identify and block malicious bots before they have a chance to cause harm. Additionally, it also helps to improve the overall user experience by ensuring that legitimate customers can access your site without interruption and enables you to have more insight into actual customers visiting your site as it removes useless and malicious traffic from the equation. As consumer-based holidays send more and more shoppers online, you shouldn’t forget to prioritize web traffic security. By taking proactive steps by deploying a reliable solution, you can minimize risk to yourself and consumers and stay ahead of bad bots.