Bots are driving web traffic

The numbers are real, but the user may not be.

InCapsula, a cloud-based security company, released a report showing that 61.5 per cent of all traffic on the Internet in 2013 was bots. 

That is a sharp increase from 2012 when there was nearly a 50-50 split between humans and bots.

The 2013 report, which was gathered from information on 1.45 billion visits on Icapsula’s network, showed that web traffic was:

• 38.5% Humans

• 31% Search engines and other good bots

• 5% Scrapers

• 4.5% Hacking tools

• 0.5% Spammers

• 20.5% Other impersonators

Most of the bot traffic was the result of increased visits by good bots (certified agents of legitimate software, such as search engines), whose presence increased from 20 per cent to 31 per cent from 2012 to 2013. 

Malicious

A total 30.5 per cent of the traffic was by malicious bots. 

Scrapers deal with content theft and duplication, which typically involves the theft of e-mail addresses for spam purposes. They most commonly affect travel, classifieds, news, and forums websites.

Impersonators typically end up consuming bandwidth causing a drag on websites. It may even result in website downtime. 

Spammers post irrelevant content that annoys legitimate website visitors. It can also post malware and phishing links.

Hackers are primary interested in data which can take the form of credit card or other forms of identity theft.