2 min read

Are Bots Getting Too Human?

Anura PR Team May 2, 2025

Bots

TL;DR

Almost half of all internet traffic now comes from bots—and one-third is malicious.
Bad bots don’t just click ads or fake form fills; they mimic humans to bypass traditional defenses.
Law enforcement just dismantled one of the largest botnets ever—911 S5—but bot threats remain widespread.
Malicious bot activity includes scraping, fraud, and coordinated DDoS attacks.

Are Bots Taking Over the Internet?

Yes—and they're not all friendly.

Nearly 50% of all web traffic is now generated by bots, according to recent insights shared through Statista, with one-third of that traffic linked to malicious programs. These bad bots are behind everything from fake ad impressions to form spam, credential stuffing, and massive-scale attacks on ecommerce and lead gen platforms.

Even with global crackdowns—like the 2024 takedown of the 911 S5 Botnet, which spanned 200 countries—fraudsters continue to deploy automated software that behaves more like a human than a machine.

Bad Bots Are Getting Smarter

Gone are the days of obvious, high-volume bot attacks. Today's bots are sophisticated, designed to blend seamlessly into legitimate traffic. They employ techniques like IP rotation, behavior randomization, geolocation spoofing, and mimicking human interactions, making them challenging to detect without advanced behavioral analysis.

The financial implications of these cyber threats are significant:

By 2023, the IC3 reported a record 880,418 complaints with potential losses exceeding $12.5 billion, nearly a 10% increase in complaints and a 22% increase in losses compared to the previous year.
A 2023 survey of U.S. small business leaders and IT professionals revealed that 47% reported monetary losses of less than $250,000 due to cyber breaches. Additionally, 10% reported losses ranging from $500,000 to $1 million.

What Are “Grey Bots”?

Not all bots are overtly malicious. Some AI-driven scrapers, sometimes called grey bots, extract huge volumes of data without consent—often to train generative AI models.

While they may not directly attack your systems, they:

Ignore robots.txt restrictions
Drain server resources
Violate IP protections and damage SEO
Potentially scrape proprietary content for third-party use

If they’re draining your content or slowing your site down, they’re a problem—regardless of intent.

Bot Use Cases: From Sneaker Drops to DDoS

Bot activity today fuels:

Scalping of high-demand items like sneakers, electronics, and concert tickets
Credential stuffing attacks that exploit leaked login credentials
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) campaigns that overload sites
Click fraud and lead fraud that inflate ad spend without ROI

These aren’t isolated incidents—they’re part of everyday digital life now.

How Do You Protect Against All This?

Traditional bot detection methods can’t keep up. IP reputation? Spoofed. CAPTCHA? Broken. Rate limits? Evaded.

Here’s what you need instead:

Real-Time Behavioral Detection

Anura analyzes every visitor’s behavior in real time, flagging bots no matter how human they try to act.

No Guesswork. No False Positives.

With Anura’s 99.999% Accuracy Guarantee when identifying visitors as bad using Anura Script, you get definitive answers—not vague probabilities.

Built to Evolve

New bots surface every day. Anura’s system is constantly learning and updating—so you stay protected against even the most sophisticated bot strategies.