CHEQ just revealed that bots and fake users made up a whopping 35.7% of all online shoppers this past Black Friday. Fake traffic included malicious scrapers and crawlers, sophisticated botnets, fake accounts, click farms, proxy users, and illegitimate users committing eCommerce-related fraud.
CHEQ’s study spanned a pool of over 42,000 websites in North America, Europe, and Asia, applying hundreds of cybersecurity tests to each website visitor to determine their authenticity.
The study found eCommerce sites were particularly vulnerable, with high exposure to carding attacks, chargeback fraud, data breaches, and fake sign-ups. CHEQ estimates that the resulting damage to businesses on this Black Friday could surpass $1.2 billion.
CHEQ’s recent report covered the cost of fake traffic to online businesses.
