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An Internet bot, web robot, robot, or simply bot, is a
software application Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not computer operator, operating, system administration, administering or computer programming, programming the computer. An application (app, application program, sof ...
that runs automated tasks ( scripts) on the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
, usually with the intent to imitate human activity, such as messaging, on a large scale. An Internet bot plays the client role in a
client–server model The client–server model is a distributed application structure that partitions tasks or workloads between the providers of a resource or service, called servers, and service requesters, called clients. Often clients and servers communicate ov ...
whereas the server role is usually played by
web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...
s. Internet bots are able to perform simple and repetitive tasks much faster than a person could ever do. The most extensive use of bots is for web crawling, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes and files information from
web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
servers. More than half of all web traffic is generated by bots. Efforts by web servers to restrict bots vary. Some servers have a
robots.txt robots.txt is the filename used for implementing the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the website they are allowed to visit. The standard, dev ...
file that contains the rules governing bot behavior on that server. Any bot that does not follow the rules could, in theory, be denied access to or removed from the affected website. If the posted text file has no associated program/software/app, then adhering to the rules is entirely voluntary. There would be no way to enforce the rules or to ensure that a bot's creator or implementer reads or acknowledges the robots.txt file. Some bots are "good", e.g. search engine spiders, while others are used to launch malicious attacks on political campaigns, for example.


IM and IRC

Some bots communicate with users of Internet-based services, via
instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...
(IM),
Internet Relay Chat IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for Many-to-many, group communication in discussion forums, called ''#Channels, channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via instant mess ...
(IRC), or other web interfaces such as Facebook bots and
Twitter bot A Twitter bot or an X bot is a type of software bot that controls a Twitter/X account via the Twitter API. The social bot software may autonomously perform actions such as tweeting, retweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messagin ...
s. These
chatbot A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of main ...
s may allow people to ask questions in plain English and then formulate a response. Such bots can often handle reporting weather,
postal code A postal code (also known locally in various English-speaking countries throughout the world as a postcode, post code, PIN or ZIP Code) is a series of letters or numerical digit, digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, inclu ...
information, sports scores, currency or other unit conversions, etc. Others are used for entertainment, such as SmarterChild on
AOL Instant Messenger AOL Instant Messenger (AIM, sometimes stylized as aim) was an instant messaging and presence information computer program created by AOL. It used the proprietary OSCAR protocol, OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow us ...
and
MSN Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as MSN), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a Cross-platform software, cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the now-di ...
. Additional roles of an IRC bot may be to listen on a conversation channel, and to comment on certain phrases uttered by the participants (based on
pattern matching In computer science, pattern matching is the act of checking a given sequence of tokens for the presence of the constituents of some pattern. In contrast to pattern recognition, the match usually must be exact: "either it will or will not be a ...
). This is sometimes used as a help service for new users or to censor
profanity Profanity, also known as swearing, cursing, or cussing, is the usage of notionally word taboo, offensive words for a variety of purposes, including to demonstrate disrespect or negativity, to relieve pain, to express a strong emotion (such a ...
.


Social bots

Social bots are sets of algorithms that take on the duties of repetitive sets of instructions in order to establish a service or connection among social networking users. Among the various designs of networking bots, the most common are chat bots, algorithms designed to converse with a human user, and social bots, algorithms designed to mimic human behaviors to converse with patterns similar to those of a human user. The history of social botting can be traced back to
Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...
in the 1950s and his vision of designing sets of instructional code approved by the
Turing test The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1949,. Turing wrote about the ‘imitation game’ centrally and extensively throughout his 1950 text, but apparently retired the term thereafter. He referred to ‘ iste ...
. In the 1960s
Joseph Weizenbaum Joseph Weizenbaum (8 January 1923 – 5 March 2008) was a German-American computer scientist and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. He is the namesake of the Weizenbaum Award and the Weizenbaum Institute. Life and career ...
created ELIZA, a natural language processing computer program considered an early indicator of artificial intelligence algorithms. ELIZA inspired computer programmers to design tasked programs that can match behavior patterns to their sets of instruction. As a result, natural language processing has become an influencing factor to the development of artificial intelligence and social bots. And as information and thought see a progressive mass spreading on social media websites, innovative technological advancements are made following the same pattern. Reports of political interferences in recent elections, including the 2016 US and 2017 UK general elections, have set the notion of bots being more prevalent because of the ethics that is challenged between the bot's design and the bot's designer. Emilio Ferrara, a computer scientist from the University of Southern California reporting on Communications of the ACM, said the lack of resources available to implement
fact-checking Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such che ...
and information verification results in the large volumes of false reports and claims made about these bots on social media platforms. In the case of Twitter, most of these bots are programmed with search filter capabilities that target keywords and phrases favoring political agendas and then retweet them. While the attention of bots is programmed to spread unverified information throughout the social media platforms, it is a challenge that programmers face in the wake of a hostile political climate. The Bot Effect is what Ferrera reported as the socialization of bots and human users creating a vulnerability to the leaking of personal information and polarizing influences outside the ethics of the bot's code, and was confirmed by Guillory Kramer in his study where he observed the behavior of emotionally volatile users and the impact the bots have on them, altering their perception of reality.


Commercial bots

There has been a great deal of controversy about the use of bots in an automated trading function. Auction website
eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...
took legal action in an attempt to suppress a third-party company from using bots to look for bargains on its site; this approach backfired on eBay and attracted the attention of further bots. The United Kingdom-based bet exchange,
Betfair Betfair is a British Gambling, gambling company founded in 2000. Its product offering includes betting exchange, sports betting, online casino, online poker, and online bingo. Business operations are led from its headquarters in London, alongsi ...
, saw such a large amount of traffic coming from bots that it launched a WebService API aimed at bot programmers, through which it can actively manage bot interactions. Bot farms are known to be used in online app stores, like the Apple App Store and
Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store, Play Store, or sometimes the Android Store (and was formerly Android Market), is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certifie ...
, to manipulate positions or increase positive ratings/reviews. A rapidly growing, benign form of internet bot is the
chatbot A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of main ...
. From 2016, when Facebook Messenger allowed developers to place chatbots on their platform, there has been an exponential growth of their use on that app alone. 30,000 bots were created for Messenger in the first six months, rising to 100,000 by September 2017. Avi Ben Ezra, CTO of SnatchBot, told Forbes that evidence from the use of their chatbot building platform pointed to a near future saving of millions of hours of human labor as 'live chat' on websites was replaced with bots. Companies use internet bots to increase online engagement and streamline communication. Companies often use bots to cut down on cost; instead of employing people to communicate with consumers, companies have developed new ways to be efficient. These chatbots are used to answer customers' questions: for example, Domino's developed a chatbot that can take orders via Facebook Messenger. Chatbots allow companies to allocate their employees' time to other tasks.


Malicious bots

One example of the malicious use of bots is the coordination and operation of an automated attack on networked computers, such as a
denial-of-service attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host co ...
by a botnet. Internet bots or web bots can also be used to commit click fraud and more recently have appeared around
MMORPG A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...
games as computer game bots. Another category is represented by spambots, internet bots that attempt to
spam Spam most often refers to: * Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ...
large amounts of content on the Internet, usually adding advertising links. More than 94.2% of websites have experienced a bot attack. There are malicious bots (and botnets) of the following types: # Spambots that harvest email addresses from contact or guestbook pages # Downloaded programs that suck bandwidth by downloading entire websites # Website scrapers that grab the content of websites and re-use it without permission on automatically generated doorway pages # Registration bots that sign up a specific email address to numerous services in order to have the confirmation messages flood the email inbox and distract from important messages indicating a security breach.Dima Bekerman
How Registration Bots Concealed the Hacking of My Amazon Account
Application Security, Industry Perspective, December 1st, 2016, In: www.Imperva.com/blog
# Viruses and worms # DDoS attacks # Botnets, zombie computers, etc. # Spambots that try to redirect people onto a malicious website, sometimes found in comment sections or forums of various websites # Viewbots create fake views # Bots that buy up higher-demand seats for concerts, particularly by ticket brokers who resell the tickets. These bots run through the purchase process of entertainment event-ticketing sites and obtain better seats by pulling as many seats back as it can. # Bots that are used in
massively multiplayer online role-playing game A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...
s to farm for resources that would otherwise take significant time or effort to obtain, which can be a concern for online in-game economies. # Bots that increase traffic counts on analytics reporting to extract money from advertisers. A study by
Comscore Comscore, Inc. is an American-based global media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, advertising agencies, brand marketers, and publishers. History Comscore was founded in July 1999 in Resto ...
found that over half of ads shown across thousands of campaigns between May 2012 and February 2013 were not served to human users. # Bots used on internet forums to automatically post inflammatory or nonsensical posts to disrupt the forum and anger users. in 2012, journalist Percy von Lipinski reported that he discovered millions of bots or botted or pinged views at CNN iReport. CNN iReport quietly removed millions of views from the account of iReporter Chris Morrow. It is not known if the ad revenue received by CNN from the fake views was ever returned to the advertisers. The most widely used anti-bot technique is
CAPTCHA Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) ( ) is a type of challenge–response authentication, challenge–response turing test used in computing to determine whether the user is human in order to de ...
. Examples of providers include
Recaptcha reCAPTCHA Inc. is a CAPTCHA system owned by Google. It enables web hosts to distinguish between human and automated access to websites. The original version asked users to decipher hard-to-read text or match images. Version 2 also asked users ...
, Minteye, Solve Media and NuCaptcha. However, captchas are not foolproof in preventing bots, as they can often be circumvented by computer character recognition, security holes, and outsourcing captcha solving to cheap laborers.


Protection against bots

In the case of academic surveys, protection against auto test taking bots is essential for maintaining accuracy and consistency in the results of the survey. Without proper precautions against these bots, the results of a survey can become skewed or inaccurate. Researchers indicate that the best way to keep bots out of surveys is to not allow them to enter to begin with. The survey should have participants from a reliable source, such as an existing department or group at work. This way, malicious bots don't have the opportunity to infiltrate the study. Another form of protection against bots is a CAPTCHA test as mentioned in a previous section, which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing Test".  This test is often used to quickly distinguish a real user from a bot by posing a challenge that a human could easily do but a bot would not.  This could be something like recognizing distorted letters or numbers, or picking out specific parts of an image, such as traffic lights on a busy street. CAPTCHAs are a great form of protection due to their ability to be completed quickly, low effort, and easy implementation. There are also dedicated companies that specialize in protection against bots, including ones like DataDome, Akamai and Imperva.  These companies offer defense systems to their clients to protect them against DDoS attacks, infrastructure attacks, and overall cybersecurity.  While the pricing rates of these companies can often be expensive, the services offered can be crucial both for large corporations and small businesses.


Human interaction with social bots

There are two main concerns with bots: clarity and face-to-face support. The cultural background of human beings affects the way they communicate with social bots. Others recognize that online bots have the ability to "masquerade" as humans online and have become highly aware of their presence. Due to this, some users are becoming unsure when interacting with a social bot. Many people believe that bots are vastly less intelligent than humans, so they are not worthy of our respect. Min-Sun Kim proposed five concerns or issues that may arise when communicating with a social robot, and they are avoiding the damage of peoples' feelings, minimizing impositions, disapproval from others, clarity issues, and how effective their messages may come across. People who oppose social robots argue that they also take away from the genuine creations of human relationships. Opposition to social bots also note that the use of social bots add a new, unnecessary layer to privacy protection. Many users call for stricter legislation in relation to social bots to ensure private information remains preserved. The discussion of what to do with social bots and how far they should go remains ongoing.


Social bots and political discussions

In recent years, political discussion platforms and politics on social media have become highly unstable and volatile. With the introduction of social bots on the political discussion scene, many users worry about their effect on the discussion and election outcomes. The biggest offender on the social media side is X (previously Twitter), where heated political discussions are raised both by bots and real users. The result is a misuse of political discussion on these platforms and a general mistrust among users for what they see.


See also

*
Agent-based model An agent-based model (ABM) is a computational model for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents (both individual or collective entities such as organizations or groups) in order to understand the behavior of a system and ...
(for bot's theory) * Botnet *
Chatbot A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of main ...
* Comparison of Internet Relay Chat bots * Dead Internet theory * Facebook Bots * IRC bot * Online algorithm * Social bot *
Software agent In computer science, a software agent is a computer program that acts for a user or another program in a relationship of agency. The term ''agent'' is derived from the Latin ''agere'' (to do): an agreement to act on one's behalf. Such "action on ...
* Software bot * Spambot *
Twitterbot A Twitter bot or an X bot is a type of software bot that controls a Twitter/X account via the Twitter API. The social bot software may autonomously perform actions such as tweeting, retweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messagin ...
* UBot Studio * Votebots * Web brigades * Wikipedia bots – bots on Wikipedia


References


External links

* {{Botnets Online auction tools