Stop the Bots

Bots are used by scalpers to buy mass amounts of highly desired products. The scalpers then resell the product at a much higher price beyond MSRP. Some of the most common products that are scalped are:

Two of the most sought-after products in late 2020 was the Playstation 5 and the Xbox Series X and S. These two videogame consoles were extremely hard to find during the holiday season with many going straight to scalpers. The graphs below reflect the median price of final sales on eBay of the Playstation 5 series consoles and the Xbox Series X and S consoles. Keep in mind these products already sell between $299.99 - $499.99 at MSRP.

There are many anti-bot measures companies can take.

1. Set hard limits per household

2. Require an email

3. Require a unique phone number

4. Implement multi-step anti-bot software

5. Require transaction to be down exclusively in physical stores

Although all these options have some value, the most difficult to implement would be anti-bot software that can detect and block bots from gaining access to the website. Companies need to branch out and fund anti-bot software. Data needs to be collected and documented of the success-rate of the software. When the software is ready for testing, the company can get results by simulating a real product drop on private servers, and then use actual bots to see how successful the software is.

For more information about bots and how they used, click here.

*Andrew Monteverde takes full responsibility for the information posted. The information on this page represents that of Andrew Monteverde and not that of California State University, Sacramento.