All about BOT

WHAT IS BOT?
(Part One)

A BOT is a computer program/software that mimics human behavior on the Internet. BOTs can be used to create artificial accounts on Social Media, provide numerous likes on a particular page, send tweets or visit various websites. All this done, without any human involvement.

BOTs already constituent a significant percentage of Non-Human Traffic (NHT) online, according to some estimates, eclipsed human traffic. Non-Human Traffic (NHT) is also known as Artificial Traffic, according to COMSCORE, a US based Internet Technology Company. This NHT traffic increased from approximately 6% of the total web traffic in 2011 to 36% in 2012. According to “IN CAPSULA”, a cloud-based security service company 60% of web traffic was non-human in 2013.

Other than BOTs, NHT on web includes traffic generated by internet routers and back end services used by websites to communicate with third parties.

In India, in 2011 to 2012, there was a 280% increase in BOT infections says, the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report-2012. According to this report 17% of BOT infected computers were in India, the highest no. in the world. 15% of global BOT-net spam is generated here. Further it states that, 69 Indian cities are prone to BOT infections.

continued...................
Reference: Hindustan Times: dtd. 05 January 2014

SPOTING BOT:

(Part Two) 

When a BOT or its friend is at work, the browser directs you to sites and pop under, and when you quit the browser, it gets re-launched after a few minutes. Chances are that your computer is part of a chain of online events which create NHT on the web, the purpose of which may be to attack a site or a server.

Malicious traffic, malware, hacking attempts, viruses, slows down the Internet and delay legitimate traffic and services. BOTs are used to target systems or take down web-sites, NHT generates fake clicks on advertisements to increase website statistics.

One of the perils of ignoring artificial web traffic is that it gets counted for real impressions for which clients end up paying.

Chirag Cherian, Director, Online PR at Perfect Relations, brand management firm says that, “Unless there is a curb on this practice of malicious NHT, one stands at risk of being duped by marketers, agencies and even clients.”

Recent studies have estimated BOT Traffic to be between 4% and 31% of total web traffic in the US; which in dollars 650 million and dollars 4.7 billion in wasted marketing spend.

A leading Chinese advertising technology company Miaozhen Systems says, “NHT caused advertisers in China to lose approximately $ 1.6 billion between July 2012 and June 2013.

continued............part two

COMBATING NHT: (Part Three)

Most servers have defence mechanisms to tackle spam and cyber-attacks. Websites are also asking for human authentication which is difficult for a BOT to execute. Still, personal computers should be equipped with strong Internet Security Applications such as Anti-virus and Anti-spyware to prevent hacking and phishing attempts and to prevent being used as slave machines for distributed cyber-attacks. We need to watch out where and how we go online.

2013 Norton Report says, “61% Indian access their social network accounts from unsecured wi-fi connections, while 42% access bank accounts and 44% shop online using unsecured wi-fi connections.”

Social media companies gradually devising mechanisms to filter BOTs.

Facebook’s site integrity policy mentions, “When a page and a fan connect on Facebook, we want to ensure that connection involves a real person interested in hearing from a specific page and engaging with that brand’s content. As such, we have recently increased our automated efforts to remove likes on pages that may have been gained by means that violate our terms.”

Agency-client intervention is necessary to ensure that artificial traffic is not presented as real. It is also important to make all agencies, advertisers and clients aware of their responsibility to keep the Internet free from malicious NHT.

Government involvement is also needed to control the problem of malicious BOTs. Until we have robust mechanism to filter out bogus traffic from real, it will be difficult to say whether the social media followers are human or not.

Continued……………part four -  Ref:  Hindustan Times dtd. 5^th January 2014