The Growing Threat of Bad Bots in eCommerce and How to Fight Back

Imagine that on the busiest shopping days of the year, more than half the traffic to your eCommerce site isn’t human. Instead, it’s automated bots.

That’s not hyperbole! It’s reality! During the 2024 holiday shopping season, an astonishing 57% of total eCommerce website traffic came from bots, both benign and malicious, far outpacing human visitors for the first time ever.

Even more alarming, bad bots alone accounted for roughly 31% of total traffic, nearly doubling from just 16% two years prior. And the tactics are more devious than ever. Nearly 60% of these malicious bots used advanced behavioral mimicry, like realistic mouse movements and human like navigation, to slip past legacy defenses undetected.

This is more than click fraud. The bots are sabotaging your revenue, hijacking inventory, and quietly eroding customer trust right under your nose.

How Bots Attack eCommerce

Bots are no longer crude scripts that are easy to detect and block. Today’s automated threats are sophisticated, distributed, and adaptive. They don’t just slow down your site. They directly target revenue, brand reputation, and customer trust.

Based on analysis of client traffic data during the 2024 holiday shopping season, here are the primary bot attack types and their impact:

1. Price Scraping

Attack Mechanism:
Bots systematically extract product pricing information at scale, typically by competitors or aggregators tracking flash sales, limited time offers, and dynamic price adjustments. Modern scraping bots can harvest massive datasets while mimicking human browsing behavior.

Holiday Traffic Data:

• Over 1.2 scraping attempts were detected and blocked during a 30 day holiday period.
  
• On Black Friday alone, 112,000 instances were recorded across 63,000 unique product pages.
  

Business Impact:

• Competitive Disadvantage: Competitors neutralize your pricing strategy by gaining real time insights.
  
• Infrastructure Overload: High bot traffic strains systems, slowing down genuine shoppers.
  
• Skewed Analytics: Inflated traffic distorts customer behavior insights, leading to poor marketing decisions.
  

2. Content Scraping

Attack Mechanism:
Bots extract proprietary content like product descriptions, reviews, and images, to repurpose on competing sites.

Holiday Traffic Data:

• 5x spike in scraping activity the day before Black Friday (58,000 bot hits in a single day).
  
• Attacks targeted over 7,000 unique URLs and 340+ category pages.
  

Business Impact:

• SEO Damage: Duplicate content hurts rankings.
  
• Lost Differentiation: Competitors copy your unique value proposition.
  
• Customer Confusion: Identical content across sites erodes trust.
  

3. Account Takeover (ATO)

Attack Mechanism:
Bots use stolen credentials and brute force attempts to hijack customer accounts, targeting stored payment info and personal data.

Holiday Traffic Data:

• 3x increase in ATO attempts the day before Black Friday (~50,000 hits).
  
• Over 500,000 ATO attempts were detected in just 30 days.
  
• 60% of peak day bot hits required behavioral based detection, showing attackers deployed their most advanced bots.
  

Business Impact:

• Financial Losses: Fraud, chargebacks, lawsuits, and remediation costs.
  
• Customer Distrust: Breaches of sensitive data erode loyalty.
  
• Regulatory Risk: Potential GDPR, CPRA, and NIS2 penalties.
  

4. Fake Account Registrations

Attack Mechanism:
Bots create large volumes of fake accounts to abuse promotions, discounts, and referral programs.

Holiday Traffic Data:

• 613,000 fake accounts created in one day (Nov 26, 2024).
  
• Over 14 million attempts during the 30 day holiday season.
  
• Attacks were distributed across 200,000+ unique IPs and user agents to evade detection.
  

Business Impact:

• Promotion Abuse: Exploiting offers meant for new customers.
  
• Distorted Metrics: Inflated customer acquisition and conversion numbers.
  
• Fraud Gateway: Fake accounts often enable further carding and scam activity.

5. Cart Abandonment 

Attack Mechanism:
Bots add items to carts without completing purchases, blocking real customers from buying limited stock goods.

Holiday Traffic Data:

• 130,000+ cart abandonment attempts recorded on Black Friday alone.
  
• Attacks were distributed across thousands of IPs to bypass detection.
  

Business Impact:

• Lost Sales: Genuine buyers are locked out of high demand items.
  
• Skewed Analytics: Inflated cart abandonment rates mislead marketing teams.
  
• Inventory Chaos: False demand signals disrupt supply chain forecasting.
  

6. Carding Attacks

Attack Mechanism:
Bots test stolen credit/debit cards in bulk against eCommerce payment workflows, validating data for fraud or resale.

Holiday Traffic Data:

• 768,000 carding attempts were detected and blocked in a 30 day holiday window.
  

Business Impact:

• Chargebacks & Penalties: Costly refunds, payment processor fines, and investigation expenses.
  
• Customer Distrust: Victims lose confidence in your platform.
  
• Regulatory Exposure: Non compliance with PCI DSS and data protection laws.

Rising Bot Threats Retailers Can’t Ignore in 2025

Bad bots are evolving rapidly, and several emerging threat vectors are expected to challenge eCommerce security teams in the upcoming holiday season.

1. AI Enhanced Bots

The most significant shift is the rise of AI powered bots, fueled by generative AI and automation tools. These bots are:

• Easier to build: Even less experienced attackers can now script bots with simple prompts.
  
• Smarter & stealthier: Capable of human like browsing, adaptive decision making, and evading detection.
  
• Equipped with advanced capabilities:
  
  • Natural language processing to auto fill forms, create fake accounts, or simulate engagement.
    
  • Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and machine learning to bypass image and audio based CAPTCHA.
    
  • Autonomous, agentic AI bots that require minimal human input and continuously retool themselves.
    

This enables faster bot development cycles and more persistent attack campaigns.

2. Mobile Focused Attacks

With mobile shopping dominating eCommerce growth, malicious actors are increasingly turning to mobile applications as targets:

• Native apps rely heavily on APIs and often lack browser based validation.
  
• Traditional defenses like CAPTCHA or JavaScript checks are far less effective in mobile environments.
  
• These gaps make mobile apps vulnerable to account fraud, credential stuffing, and API abuse.

3. Distributed Infrastructure Attacks

The use of cloud infrastructure and residential proxy networks is making detection harder:

• Attack traffic appears to come from legitimate, trusted sources.
  
• Constant IP and identity rotation allow bots to slip past defenses.
  
• This distributed approach enables large scale attacks that overwhelm security systems.

4. Multi Vector Attack Strategies

Modern attackers increasingly deploy coordinated, multi layered campaigns, combining:

• Bot driven scraping and credential abuse.
  
• Exploits targeting web application vulnerabilities.
  
• Business logic manipulation.
  
• AP – specific attacks.
  

This multi pronged approach complicates defense efforts and increases the chances of successful breaches.

How Retailers Can Defend Against Bot Attacks

The numbers are alarming, but eCommerce organizations are not powerless. With the right strategies, businesses can strengthen their defenses against even the most sophisticated bot threats. Here are the key steps retailers should prioritize:

1. Implement Advanced, Multi Layered Bot Management

Modern bots are designed to slip past legacy defenses, so businesses need equally advanced countermeasures. A multi layered solution should include:

• Preemptive Protection: Block known malicious identities using the latest threat intelligence before attacks even materialize.
  
• AI Powered Detection: Use behavioral based algorithms to spot human like bots in real time, even those using tactics like rotating IPs, distributed attacks, or CAPTCHA solving.
  
• Granular Mitigation: Apply adaptive mitigation challenges (including invisible, non interactive methods) to stop malicious bots without disrupting genuine shoppers.
  

2. Develop Mobile Specific Security Strategies

Mobile shopping now drives the majority of eCommerce traffic, which also makes it a prime target. Retailers should:

• Integrate mobile bot management SDKs within native apps for deeper visibility into mobile specific threats.
  
• Defend against emulators, device spoofing, and tampered apps to ensure only genuine devices can transact.
  
• Recognize that traditional web defenses (like browser validation and CAPTCHA) are not enough for mobile environments.

3. Adopt an Integrated Application Security Strategy

Attackers don’t rely on one method, nor should defenders. A siloed approach to security leaves blind spots. Instead:

• Consolidate bot management, WAF, API security, DDoS protection, and client side protection into a holistic, integrated strategy.
  
• Cross correlate threats across different modules for end to end visibility.
  
• Maintain consistent security policies across all application layers to ensure coordinated defense against multi vector campaigns.

4. Onboard Managed Security Services

For many retailers, especially during peak holiday seasons, internal teams may not have the bandwidth to manage 24/7 defense. Partnering with specialized security experts can provide:

• 24/7 monitoring and rapid incident response.
  
• Proactive intelligence on emerging threats.
  
• Expert skillsets to handle complex, large scale attacks.
  
• Shared responsibility that reduces downtime and ensures protection even during traffic surges.
  

Conclusion

Bots have become one of the most serious and immediate threats facing eCommerce today, directly impacting revenue, reputation, and customer trust. With the rise of AI powered, mobile focused, and multi vector attacks, retailers cannot afford to rely on outdated defenses. The 2024 holiday season proved just how disruptive automated threats can be, and the risks will only intensify in 2025. By investing in advanced bot management, mobile specific protections, and integrated security strategies, businesses can stay one step ahead. The fight against bad bots is ongoing, but with the right defenses, retailers can protect their growth and customers alike.