Bots now outnumber humans on the internet

It may be slightly terrifying to note that you’re never truly alone when searching the internet anymore.

Sure, hundreds of millions of people may be surfing the web at the same time you are, but there are now currently even more non-human visitors sprawling around the internet than ever before.

According to a recent study by Incapsula, bots now comprise 61.5 percent of all internet traffic, up by a fifth from last year. In 2012, despite bots having a slight edge, the numbers were mostly even, with human traffic comprising 49 percent of web searches, and bots comprising 51 percent. With only 38.5 percent of traffic in 2013 coming from human searches, who knows what 2014 will bring.

Fortunately, not all of these bots are spammers or hackers; in fact, the aforementioned growth comes mostly from “good” bots, tasked with gathering analytical data. But almost 31 percent of bot traffic comes from bad bots, intent on doing as much damage as possible.

• Spammers - probably the most well-known, posting malware/phishing links that can at best annoy a website’s legitimate audience and at worst introduce malware to a computer system.
• “Scraper” bots - designed to steal and duplicate content, as well as steal emails in order to spam the user.
• Impersonator bots - programmed purposefully for marketing intelligence gathering, including DDoS attacks and bandwidth consumption.
• Hacking bots - possibly the most devastating of the bunch, which cause data theft, corruption due to malware, website defacement, and website/server highjacking.

Interesting to note, spam bots have decreased – albeit slightly – over the past year. In 2012, spam bots consisted of 2 percent of traffic, to only .5 percent of traffic in 2013. It’s entirely possible that Google’s anti-spam campaign is to thank for this. Still, hacking attempts and malware attacks are becoming smarter and more efficient, with many attacks custom-made for precise activities.

SOURCE: The Fiscal Times https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/12/14/Humans-Now-Account-Less-40-Web-Traffic-Infographic