Internet bot
Encyclopedia
Internet bots, also known as web robots, WWW robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet
. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering
, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. Each server can have a file called
In addition to their uses outlined above, bots may also be implemented where a response speed faster than that of humans is required (e.g., gaming bots and auction-site robots) or less commonly in situations where the emulation of human activity is required, for example chat bots
. Recently bots have been used for search advertising, such as Google Adsense.
s are used in automated online assistants by organizations as a way of interacting with consumers and users of services. This can avail for enterprises to reduce their operating and training cost. A major underlying technology to such systems is natural language processing
.
There has been a great deal of controversy about the use of bots in an automated trading function. Auction website eBay
has been to court in an attempt to suppress a third-party company from using bots to traverse their site looking for bargains; this approach backfired on eBay and attracted the attention of further bots.
.
s so the programs can choose the correct answers the first time more often. The word database dumps were created so when the incorrect answer was chosen, the bots would record the correct answer the next page would show. Thus, the bot would choose the correct answer whenever it happened upon the same words later. Due to the growing number of scripts used on FreeRice, the number of rice donated has remarkably risen. Currently there are no rules governing "ricebots", as they are called. Until those rules are formed, anyone is free to program and use the scripts. With a delay of about 3 seconds between iterations, it is estimated that a script can feed about 8 people per day, if running 24/7. The idea was taken even further to create a multi-threaded
bot which can run fifty or more browser instances at a time, enough to liberate as much as 600,000 grains of rice per hour or to feed 720 people per day. One script with 1,000 threads was able to donate over 3,000,000 grains in just a few hours.
Donated rice comes from the advertisements from sponsors, therefore abuse of scripts will likely lead to catastrophe, as advertisers prefer that actual people view their advertisements. Knowing the existence of the bots, FreeRice updated their FAQ
explaining the potential damage of botting. Some bots have made changes to make sure they won't spoil the FreeRice spirit.
by a botnet
. Internet bots can also be used to commit click fraud
and more recently have seen usage around MMORPG
games as computer game bot
s. A spambot is an internet bot that attempts to spam
large amounts of content on the Internet, usually adding advertising links.
The most widely used anti-bot technique is the use of CAPTCHA
, which is a type of Turing test
used to distinguish between a human user and a less-sophisticated AI-powered bot, by the use of graphically encoded human-readable text.
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering
Web crawler
A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters.This process is called Web...
, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. Each server can have a file called
robots.txtRobots Exclusion StandardThe Robot Exclusion Standard, also known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol, is a convention to prevent cooperating web crawlers and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website which is otherwise publicly viewable. Robots are often used by search engines to...
, containing rules for the spidering of that server that the bot is supposed to obey.In addition to their uses outlined above, bots may also be implemented where a response speed faster than that of humans is required (e.g., gaming bots and auction-site robots) or less commonly in situations where the emulation of human activity is required, for example chat bots
Chatterbot
A chatter robot, chatterbot, chatbot, or chat bot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods, primarily for engaging in small talk. The primary aim of such simulation has been to fool the user into thinking...
. Recently bots have been used for search advertising, such as Google Adsense.
Commercial purposes
ChatterbotChatterbot
A chatter robot, chatterbot, chatbot, or chat bot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods, primarily for engaging in small talk. The primary aim of such simulation has been to fool the user into thinking...
s are used in automated online assistants by organizations as a way of interacting with consumers and users of services. This can avail for enterprises to reduce their operating and training cost. A major underlying technology to such systems is natural language processing
Natural language processing
Natural language processing is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages; it began as a branch of artificial intelligence....
.
There has been a great deal of controversy about the use of bots in an automated trading function. Auction website eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
has been to court in an attempt to suppress a third-party company from using bots to traverse their site looking for bargains; this approach backfired on eBay and attracted the attention of further bots.
Charitable purposes
Bots have also been known to fast-track the purposes of charities, one of which is FreeRiceFreeRice
Freerice is a website where users play various educational, multiple-choice games in order to fight world hunger. For every question the user answers correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated...
.
On FreeRice
Since FreeRice became well-known through Digg.com and other news sources, many programming-adept users created scripts to automatically play the game for them. The scripts operate far faster than humans alone and run for 24 hours a day. At first, the scripts got only ≈1/4 of the words correct by random chance. Eventually, these bots were adapted with automated online dictionary search, dictionary files, and word database dumpDatabase dump
A database dump contains a record of the table structure and/or the data from a database and is usually in the form of a list of SQL statements. A database dump is most often used for backing up a database so that its contents can be restored in the event of data loss. Corrupted databases can often...
s so the programs can choose the correct answers the first time more often. The word database dumps were created so when the incorrect answer was chosen, the bots would record the correct answer the next page would show. Thus, the bot would choose the correct answer whenever it happened upon the same words later. Due to the growing number of scripts used on FreeRice, the number of rice donated has remarkably risen. Currently there are no rules governing "ricebots", as they are called. Until those rules are formed, anyone is free to program and use the scripts. With a delay of about 3 seconds between iterations, it is estimated that a script can feed about 8 people per day, if running 24/7. The idea was taken even further to create a multi-threaded
Thread (computer science)
In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest unit of processing that can be scheduled by an operating system. The implementation of threads and processes differs from one operating system to another, but in most cases, a thread is contained inside a process...
bot which can run fifty or more browser instances at a time, enough to liberate as much as 600,000 grains of rice per hour or to feed 720 people per day. One script with 1,000 threads was able to donate over 3,000,000 grains in just a few hours.
Donated rice comes from the advertisements from sponsors, therefore abuse of scripts will likely lead to catastrophe, as advertisers prefer that actual people view their advertisements. Knowing the existence of the bots, FreeRice updated their FAQ
FAQ
Frequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual...
explaining the potential damage of botting. Some bots have made changes to make sure they won't spoil the FreeRice spirit.
Malicious purposes
Another, more malicious use of bots is the coordination and operation of an automated attack on networked computers, such as a denial-of-service attackDenial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
by a botnet
Botnet
A botnet is a collection of compromised computers connected to the Internet. Termed "bots," they are generally used for malicious purposes. When a computer becomes compromised, it becomes a part of a botnet...
. Internet bots can also be used to commit click fraud
Click fraud
Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target...
and more recently have seen usage around MMORPG
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
games as computer game bot
Computer game bot
A bot, most prominently in the first-person shooter types , is a type of weak AI expert system software which for each instance of the program controls a player in deathmatch, team deathmatch and/or cooperative human player. Computer bots may play against other bots and/or human players in unison,...
s. A spambot is an internet bot that attempts to spam
Spam (electronic)
Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
large amounts of content on the Internet, usually adding advertising links.
- There are malicious bots (and botnets) of the following types:
- Spambots that harvest email addressesE-mail address harvestingEmail harvesting is the process of obtaining lists of email addresses using various methods for use in bulk email or other purposes usually grouped as spam.-Methods:...
from internet forumInternet forumAn Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
s, contact forms or guestbookGuestbookA guestbook is a paper or electronic means for a visitor to acknowledge their visitation to a site, physical or web-based, and leave their name, postal or electronic address , and a comment or note, if desired...
pages - Downloader programs that use up bandwidth by downloading entire web sites
- Web site scrapersWeb scrapingWeb scraping is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites...
that grab the content of web sites and re-use it without permission on automatically generated doorway pages - Viruses and worms
- DDoS attacks
- Botnets / zombie computers; etc.
- File-name modifiers on peer-to-peerPeer-to-peerPeer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
file-sharing networks. These change the names of files (often containing malware) to match user search queries. - Automating the entry of internet sweepstakes or instant win games to get an advantage
- Automating tasks on promotional web sites to win prizes
- VotebotsVotebotsA VoteBot is a type of Internet bot which aims to vote automatically in online polls, often in a malicious manner. VoteBots attempts to act like a human, but conduct voting in an automated manner in order to impact the result of the poll. A variety of VoteBot programs, targeted different kinds of...
which automatically cast votes for or againsts certain forms of user-contributed content such as videos on YoutubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
or reader comments on blog pages.- Bots are also used to buy up good seats for concerts, particularly by ticket brokers who resell the tickets. Bots are employed against entertainment event-ticketing sites, like TicketMaster.com. The bots are used by ticket brokers to unfairly obtain the best seats for themselves while depriving the general public from also having a chance to obtain the good seats. The bot runs through the purchase process and obtains better seats by pulling as many seats back as it can.
- Bots are often used in massively multiplayer online role-playing gameMassively multiplayer online role-playing gameMassively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
s (MMORPG) to farm for resources that would otherwise take significant time or effort to obtain; this is a concern for most online in-game economies. As such, players are often banned from their respective MMORPG for going outside the programming and "cheating" as bots are not typically allowed because they give an unfair advantage.
The most widely used anti-bot technique is the use of CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing as an attempt to ensure that the response is generated by a person. The process usually involves one computer asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade...
, which is a type of Turing test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...
used to distinguish between a human user and a less-sophisticated AI-powered bot, by the use of graphically encoded human-readable text.
Bots in popular culture
- The 2006 BasshunterBasshunterJonas Erik Altberg , better known by his stage name Basshunter, is a Swedish singer-songwriter, record producer and DJ. He is best known for his number one hits "Boten Anna", "Dota", "Now You're Gone" and "All I Ever Wanted". Basshunter has so far released a total of six albums, two of which have...
hit song "Boten AnnaBoten Anna"Boten Anna" is a song by Swedish eurodance musician Basshunter, which appears on his third studio album, . Due to the song, Basshunter became a noted artist in his native Sweden, as well as Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Poland and the Netherlands after the release of the single in 2006...
" is about a man who mistakes a female IRC user named Anna for an IRC botIRC botthumb|409px|right|An IRC bot performing a simple task.An IRC bot is a set of scripts or an independent program that connects to Internet Relay Chat as a client, and so appears to other IRC users as another user...
. - During the naming contest for a Hungarian bridge, Colbert Nation forum members developed a bot to stuff the ballot box. Stephen ColbertStephen ColbertStephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
asked his viewers to cease their voting to name the bridge after him, and apologized to the Hungarians with a large segment on his show, The Colbert Report.
See also
- ChatterbotChatterbotA chatter robot, chatterbot, chatbot, or chat bot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods, primarily for engaging in small talk. The primary aim of such simulation has been to fool the user into thinking...
- BotnetBotnetA botnet is a collection of compromised computers connected to the Internet. Termed "bots," they are generally used for malicious purposes. When a computer becomes compromised, it becomes a part of a botnet...
- Interactive online charactersInteractive online charactersAn automated online assistant is a program that uses artificial intelligence to provide customer service or other assistance on a website. Such an assistant may basically consist of a dialog system, an avatar, as well an expert system to provide specific expertise to the user.Automated online...
- IRC botIRC botthumb|409px|right|An IRC bot performing a simple task.An IRC bot is a set of scripts or an independent program that connects to Internet Relay Chat as a client, and so appears to other IRC users as another user...
- KnowbotKnowbotA knowbot is a kind of bot that collects information by automatically gathering certain specified information from web sites.KNOWBOT is the acronym for Knowledge-Based Object Technology...
- SpambotSpambotA spambot is an automated computer program designed to assist in the sending of spam. Spambots usually create fake accounts and send spam using them, although it would be obvious that a spambot is sending it...
- Web crawlerWeb crawlerA Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters.This process is called Web...