如何保护移动应用免受运动鞋机器人的侵害

自动购买机器人，也被称为“运动鞋机器人”、“点击机器人”、“Instacart机器人”和其他名字，正在毁掉消费者和工人的网上购物和零工经济体验。这些机器人会对移动业务的声誉和底线造成相当大的损害。

正如它们的名字所表明的那样，这些机器人最初是为了自动购买运动鞋而开发的，使收藏者和囤积者(他们会以10倍以上的加价转售运动鞋)能够大量购买最新款运动鞋，并挤出普通消费者。因此，例如，当耐克发布一款新鞋时，个人几乎不可能击败机器人并在网上为自己购买一双。

但这些自动交易机器人现在不仅仅用于运动鞋。航空公司、电子商务和活动网站，甚至是拼车公司都受到了机器人抓取信息和囤积产品的困扰，这损害了目标公司的品牌，使消费者难以购买商品和服务。

这些机器人很容易得到。苹果应用商店和谷歌Play都提供下载，还有许多其他网站。例如，Instacart bot是与合法Instacart一起运行的第三方应用程序，一旦收到最好的订单，它就会立即提出要求，这使得消费者几乎不可能获得最有利可图的订单。

这个问题越来越严重。Imperva的数据显示，2019年，坏机器人占据了网站总流量的近四分之一。虽然笔记本电脑当然可以运行机器人，但应用程序才是真正的行动所在。皮尤研究中心报告称，74%的家庭拥有一台电脑，84%的家庭拥有一部智能手机。但在使用方面，手机占据了主导地位。去年，全球超过一半的互联网流量来自移动设备，美国消费者使用智能手机的时间比他们使用台式机和笔记本电脑的时间多约40%。

原文：Automated purchasing bots, also known as "sneaker bots," "click bots," "Instacart bots" and other names, are ruining the online shopping and gig economy experience for both consumers and workers. These bots can cause considerable damage to a mobile business' reputation and bottom line.

As their namesake indicates, these bots were originally developed to automate the purchase of sneakers, enabling collectors and hoarders (who will resell them at a 10x or more markup) to buy mass quantities of the latest releases and squeeze out ordinary customers. As a result, for example, when Nike releases a new shoe, it can be almost impossible for individuals to beat the bots and purchase a pair for themselves online.

But these automated transaction bots are now used for far more than just sneakers. Airlines, e-commerce and events sites, and even rideshare companies all suffer from bots that scrape information and hoard products, damaging the targeted company's brand and making it difficult for consumers to buy goods and services.

These bots are easy to get. Both the Apple App Store and Google Play provide them for downloading, along with many other websites. For example, Instacart bots are third-party apps that run alongside the legitimate Instacart app and claim the best orders immediately as they are posted on the app, making it practically impossible for human shoppers to get access to most lucrative orders.

The problem is growing. According to Imperva, bad bots made up nearly a quarter of overall website traffic in 2019. Although laptops can certainly run bots, apps are where the action is. Pew Research Center reports that 74 percent of households own a computer and 84 percent have a smartphone. But when it comes to usage, mobile dominates. More than half of worldwide Internet traffic last year came from mobile devices, and U.S. consumers spent about 40 percent more time using their smartphones than they did their desktops and laptops.