Be Alert, Almost Half of Internet Traffic is Controlled by Bots

Morrissey Technology – Bots and spam have now become an inseparable part of internet life. But who would have thought that the presence of bots would almost displace organic internet traffic from human users. According to the ‘2024 Bad Bot Report’ released by cybersecurity expert Imperva, bots already control 49.6% of all internet traffic. Worse, 32% of all internet traffic is now flooded by rogue bots.

“Bots are one of the most entrenched and growing threats every industry faces,” said Minerva General Manager Application Security, Nanhi Singh.

“From simple web scraping to things like account takeover, spam and denial of service, bots have a negative impact on an organization’s bottom line,” he continued.

Imperva finds rogue bot traffic. Rogue bot traffic varies greatly depending on the country. For example, Ireland is in first place with 72% of its traffic controlled by bots, followed by Germany (67.5%) and Mexico (42.8%).

Bots are not only found on social media but also in video games. According to Imperva’s findings, bot activity in the gaming world is among the largest among all sectors with 57.2% of total traffic. Other sectors that are heavily populated by bots include retail (24.4% of total traffic), travel FOR4D (20.7%), and financial services (15.7%).

Furthermore, Imperva said that rogue bots that are increasingly sophisticated and can imitate human behavior and avoid detection are often found on legal and government websites, entertainment and financial services.

This report further strengthens the ‘Dead Internet’ theory. This theory argues that organic, human-made content has been replaced by content created by artificial intelligence (AI) which is now flooding the internet and the accounts that interact with this content are also bots.

“As the number of AI-enabled tools increases, the presence of bots will become more widespread. Organizations must invest in bot management and API security tools to manage threats from malicious automated traffic,” said Singh.