Black Friday is a time of the year when the vast majority of shoppers start looking into purchasing things that they might have been holding off on previously. Many shoppers wait for this time of the year because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing them to buy items at a much lower price. However, about a third of these shoppers found it unreasonably difficult to do so because many of the deals that they had been looking to take advantage of had already been scooped by someone else.
The problem is, about a third of Black Friday deals weren’t availed by humans, but rather by bots. A report called The Impact of Invalid Traffic on Marketing by cybersecurity firm CHEQ has revealed that this is the case, with bots and fake users comprising over 35% of the total number of Black Friday sales. This analysis involved looking into over 42,000 websites across the US, Europe and Asia, and with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that this is having a rather negative effect on the economy in general.
The sites that were offering these deals also had to face things like chargeback fraud wherein a malicious actor would make a fake purchase and then ask for a refund. The rise of ecommerce over the past year has meant that more and more shoppers were looking for online Black Friday deals, but that has also resulted in an increase in bot traffic on the day. This problem is likely going to keep getting worse in the future, so ecommerce companies might want to start looking into ways in which they can go about solving it to maintain security in subsequent Black Fridays.
Read next: A Study Reveals That Customers Of Banks, Mobile Networks, And Retail Stores Are Increasingly Holding Them Accountable For Scams Being Conducted
The problem is, about a third of Black Friday deals weren’t availed by humans, but rather by bots. A report called The Impact of Invalid Traffic on Marketing by cybersecurity firm CHEQ has revealed that this is the case, with bots and fake users comprising over 35% of the total number of Black Friday sales. This analysis involved looking into over 42,000 websites across the US, Europe and Asia, and with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that this is having a rather negative effect on the economy in general.
The sites that were offering these deals also had to face things like chargeback fraud wherein a malicious actor would make a fake purchase and then ask for a refund. The rise of ecommerce over the past year has meant that more and more shoppers were looking for online Black Friday deals, but that has also resulted in an increase in bot traffic on the day. This problem is likely going to keep getting worse in the future, so ecommerce companies might want to start looking into ways in which they can go about solving it to maintain security in subsequent Black Fridays.
Read next: A Study Reveals That Customers Of Banks, Mobile Networks, And Retail Stores Are Increasingly Holding Them Accountable For Scams Being Conducted