 | Bots: The good, the bad and the VPN20 February 2025 | lisa |
The internet is teeming with bots—automated programs that perform various tasks, from helpful to harmful. While some bots enhance user experiences and streamline processes, others pose significant threats. Understanding the role of bots, their benefits, and the risks they bring is crucial in today's digital landscape. Let’s dive into the world of bots, exploring the good, the bad, and how VPN's can make it difficult to block bot activity.
The Good: Helpful bots that make life easier
Not all bots are bad or, indeed, criminal. In fact, many bots work behind the scenes to improve our digital experiences. Here are some examples of beneficial bots:
- Search engine crawlers: Google, Bing, and other search engines deploy bots to crawl, index, and rank web pages, ensuring that users receive relevant search results.
- Chatbots: Many businesses use AI-powered chatbots to provide customer support, answer queries, and enhance user engagement.
- Automation bots: Bots help automate repetitive tasks such as scheduling social media posts.
- Security bots: Some bots are designed to detect and prevent cyber threats, such as fraud detection bots that monitor suspicious activities on banking platforms.
These good bots enhance efficiency and convenience, making our online interactions smoother and more responsive.
The Bad: Malicious bots that threaten cybersecurity
Unfortunately, not all bots have good intentions. Some bots are created to exploit vulnerabilities, disrupt systems, and steal data. Here are some of the most common malicious bots:
- Scraper bots: These bots harvest data from websites without permission, leading to issues like content theft and competitive intelligence gathering.
- DDoS bots: Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) bots overwhelm websites with fake traffic, causing downtime and disruptions.
- Spam bots: These bots flood forums, emails, and comment sections with unsolicited messages, leading to misinformation and phishing scams.
- Credential stuffing bots: These bots use stolen login credentials to gain unauthorised access to accounts, often resulting in data breaches.
Malicious bots create security challenges for individuals and businesses alike, making it essential to implement protective measures.
The VPN: How bots use it to stay hidden
While VPNs are often associated with user security, bots can also leverage them for harmful purposes. Malicious bots use VPNs to mask their origins, making it harder for security systems to detect and block them. Here’s how bots take advantage of VPNs:
- Evading detection: Bots use VPNs to rotate IP addresses, avoiding blacklists and security measures meant to block them.
- Bypassing geo-restrictions: Just like users, bots can use VPNs to bypass regional restrictions, enabling fraudulent activities such as fake clicks on advertisements.
- Enhancing anonymity: VPNs allow bot operators to conceal their real locations, making it difficult for cybersecurity professionals to track them down.
- Enabling scaled attacks: Distributed botnets utilise VPNs to create an illusion of traffic originating from different parts of the world, making attacks like credential stuffing and DDoS harder to mitigate.
What should I do about bots?
Most bots that come through to your site aren't harmful. These will come and go sporadically, so you do not need to do anything. Bluepark takes the security of your site very seriously, so we obviously have systems in place to block harmful bots that could affect your site negatively.
If you do spot a bot on your site, it is best to leave it alone. However, if you have researched what that bot is, and decide that you want to block it, enter its IP address into the IP addresses to ban field in Settings > Website > Site Security Options. Just make sure you don't ban a Google bot!
