Joy of Medina County Magazine | November 2020
BUSINESS: THE IN BOX
Attack of the Bots by Amy Barnes Suddenly, overnight there are a hundred or so sign-ups for the company’s customer newsletter. Following days net the same response rate, with no sign of slowing down as the days pass. The company owner thinks, wow, what did I do right that inspired such a sudden, overwhelming response? On a closer look, however, something is not right, and our hard-working business owner begins to wonder what exactly is happening. The online sign-up form is showing that with each new sign up, only the e-mail address box is appropriately filled. The fields for name, address and where-did-you-hear-about-us are a mishmash of nonsense letters. The business owner sends a couple of test e-mails to verify the e-mails are legitimate. No response comes, but the emails do not bounce back as having gone to fake addresses. What our business owner does not know is that if responses did come back, they likely would have phishing scam links or some other nefarious trap and the noresponse result is actually a fortunate one. Research of the sign-up sources by the company’s web site administrator quickly reveals that they are bots using a wide variety of constantly changing IP addresses, making it impossible to block them. The bots have saved the sign-up page URL and automatically contacts it hundreds of times every 24 hours, filling in the fields and providing fake or spoof e-mail addresses. Has something like this happened to you? Have you wondered what the goal is? The goal is the same as it is for scammer phone calls: getting your information to access bank accounts, create credit accounts, and more. Bots look for fill-in fields that are big enough to drop in a scam ad and an attempt to gather, or phish, for information. One of the most cost-effective ways to combat the bots is to change the URL of the sign-up page by deleting the original page and creating a new one. Have you discovered additional ways to combat bots? Share your strategies by e-mailing them to Joy@BlakeHousePublishing.com for possible inclusion in a future column.
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Interested in writing this column? Contact Amy Barnes at Joy@BlakeHousePublishing.com Be sure to include information about your business experience and a sample column of no more than 350 words.
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