The Good bots vs bad bots debate has been going on for a long time now – something that has often confused spectators. Almost half of internet traffic today comes from these bots, and around 25% comes from bad bots performing malevolent tasks.
However, there are good bots operated by reputable companies that can benefit both the website and users, so when managing bot traffic on our site, we must consider these good bots.
Next, let’s take discuss the difference between Good Bots VS Bad Bots, what to expect from them, and especially how to manage them effectively.
So, What is a Bot?
A bot, or to be exact, an internet bot, is an automated program that operates on a network to automatically perform a specific task (in rare cases, several tasks).
Typically, these tasks are relatively simple and repeatable. Any human can easily perform these tasks by themselves, but the main benefit of using these bots is that they can repeatedly perform the task at a much faster pace than any human user ever could.
Almost half of the total internet traffic today comes from these bots, and around 25% comes from bad bots performing malevolent tasks.
However, there are good bots operated by reputable companies that can benefit both the website and users, so when managing bot traffic on our site, we must take account of these good bots.
Here, we will discuss the difference between Good Bots VS Bad Bots, what to expect from them, and especially how to manage them effectively.
Good Bots VS Bad Bots: The Key Differences
The most important difference between a good and bad bot is their task: a good bot performs beneficial tasks, while bad bots perform malicious tasks.
Further below, we will discuss examples of these tasks and the different types of good and bad bots. However, there are also some key factors to consider when differentiating between Good Bots VS Bad Bots:
1. Owner/Operator:
An important distinction between good and bad bots is the operator: good bots are typically owned by reputable companies (think Google and Amazon), while malicious bots are owned and/or operated by hackers.
With, many malicious bots are disguising their operators with these reputable companies, so it can be difficult to distinguish.
2. Compliance With Rules:
We can set up policies and rules of which pages can and can’t be crawled by bots and other rules via robots.txt or access, among other means. Good bots will always follow these rules, and bad bots typically won’t.
3. Fingerprints:
Many malicious bots are disguising themselves as not good bots but legitimate human users. However, in these disguise attempts, they often leave certain ‘fingerprints’ such as:
- IP address or suspicious geographic location
- Headless/modified browsers
- The inconsistent browser and OS usage
- Linear, patterned mouse movements
- Repetitive patterns in filling out forms, etc.
By paying extra attention to these three factors, we can better differentiate between good and bad bots.
Examples of Good Bots:
As discussed, we can mainly differentiate good bots from bad bots by looking at their tasks/activities.
The following are some common examples of good bots with their respective tasks:
1. Spider Bots:
These bots ‘crawl’ web pages to collect information. Various bots work on search engines like Google, Bingbot, and others. These are good examples of spider bots crawling and indexing various websites so they can be featured and ranked on the respective search engines.
2. Copyright Bots:
They work with similar principles to the spider bots, as they also crawl websites to check their content. However, these bots are specifically looking for potential breaches in copyright. YouTube ID is a good example of a copyright bot that scans various YouTube videos for copyrighted songs, images, and footage.
3. Data Bots:
These bots collect data and update information in real-time. For example, bots update real-time weather information, currency rate changes, etc. Google Assistant and Siri are advanced examples of data bots.
4. Monitoring Bots:
These bots monitor various metrics on a website, such as whether the website is currently down, changes in backlink profile, etc.
Examples of Bad Bots
In the battle of good bots vs bad bots, here are what bad bots look like. Unlike the good bots, they perform malicious tasks such as:
1. Vulnerability Scanning/Malware Injection:
These bots crawl and scan websites, looking for vulnerabilities and potential opportunities for attack. The bot, for example, can inject malware of various types immediately after it has found a vulnerability on the web app.
The operator can launch more severe attacks by discovering the system’s vulnerabilities and performing full-fledged data breaches.
2. Account Takeover (ATO):
Bots can be utilized to perform brute force and carry out other attacks to steal your credentials, attempting to gain access to a user/administrator account.
3. Web Scraping:
These bots extract the content and use it for malicious purposes, for example, re-publishing the content on another website to ‘steal’ the original site’s traffic and SEO performance. Also, the operator can leak scraped information to competitors and the public.
4. Spam:
These bots leave automatically generated spam, commonly including links to the operator’s fraudulent websites.
How to Manage Bad Bots?
The most effective way to filter out bad bots from good ones is to use proper bot management strategies and software to do the job.
If you are looking to remove the harmful effects of bots from your digital and tech world, experts suggest three major suggestions or strategies for doing the same.
1. Using a Fingerprint-Bases Scanner Or A Signature:
As a user, you need to understand that there are several ways in which a bot management solution works. The first and most common way is creating a digital signature by tracing the IP of the source.
This helps create a digital fingerprint-like scanner and allows you to understand the exact source of the origin. If the source is problematic, the software solution sounds an alarm and takes the necessary steps to eliminate the danger.
2. Solutions Based On Challenges:
How many of us have seen the famous or highly irritating ‘CAPTCHA’ whenever we use or try to open a website? While we humans feel that the tests are too stupid, the system has been highly successful in evading their intelligence when it comes to bots. This is one of the most effective ways to keep bots from your digital platforms.
3. Human Behaviour Checking Solutions
Human beings have a way of using computer systems. The movement of the mouse, clicks, time taken, scrolling behaviors, etc., inform the software if it is the human being assessing a website or a bot.
If it catches a pattern bots use such as the exact horizontal or vertical flows of the mouse, cursor, and scroll. Game over, it locks them out.
And it’s a Wrap!
That’s all on the differences between good bots and bad bots. The individuals or agencies making these bad bots use the most sophisticated and advanced technology to bypass security systems.
According to DataDome, bad bots should be taken seriously as they can come laden with elements like malware and ransomware. And that’s coming from one of the foremost agencies experimenting with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
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