Recent research from DataDome shows that bots could disrupt Black Friday gaming sales. Scalpers are leveraging false accounts in order to deploy bots at a large scale and bypass purchase limits. By operating multiple accounts, scalpers can take a large portion of a retailer’s inventory before legitimate buyers can purchase them. With their large inventory, scalpers can then turn around and sell the products at an inflated rate. 

The research reveals that many online retailers are unprepared to defend against bot attacks, leaving their inventory susceptible to scalpers and their reputation among legitimate customers damaged. 100% of tested sites allowed the creation of false accounts. Nearly one-third allowed false account creation without the use of advanced techniques, whereas nearly three-fourths allowed false account creation with the use of advanced techniques (such as MFA handling or CAPTCHA solving). 

Key findings from the report include: 

• 57.2% of websites did not utilize CAPTCHA. 
• 64% of websites did not validate provided email addresses. 
• 35.7% of websites allowed a bot to login with CAPTCHA or MFA.