A bot is a program that performs tasks on the internet automatically and repeatedly.
Around half of all web traffic now comes from bots.
Types of Bots
Many bots are useful, such as search engine crawlers, monitoring services and customer service chatbots.
Others are used for attacks and fraud.
Malicious Bots
Malicious bots send spam, test stolen credentials, buy up limited goods, copy content and prices or overload servers.
They often work as a botnet of thousands of hijacked devices.
Bot Detection and Defense
Operators recognise bots by behaviour, origin and technical traits.
Defences include rate limiting, firewalls, block lists and CAPTCHAs.
CDPCaptcha lets the browser solve a computational task that individual people do not notice but that becomes expensive for bots at scale.
Bot Creation
Bots can be built with little effort today;
ready-made tools and services are freely available.
Bot Programming
Typical tools are scripting languages such as Python, browser automation with headless browsers and interfaces to AI models.
With them, bots can open pages, fill in forms and even understand text.
Bot Deployment
Bots run on servers, in the cloud or on infected devices.
Proxies and changing IP addresses disguise their origin.
Legal and Ethical Considerations
Whether a bot is allowed depends on its purpose, its method and the rules of the website concerned.
Privacy Concerns
Bots that collect personal data are subject to the GDPR.
Defences must also respect data protection;
CDPCaptcha therefore works without cookies and without fingerprinting.
Regulation and Oversight
Laws prohibit, for example, attacks on computer systems, ticket bots or misleading social bots.
The EU AI Act also requires chatbots to be recognisable as such.
Future of Bots
Bots are becoming more capable and harder to tell apart from humans.
Technological Advances
AI agents can complete entire workflows on their own, solve picture puzzles and imitate human behaviour.
Defences must therefore rely on signals that cannot easily be faked, such as real computational cost.
Societal Changes
Bots increasingly shape what content people see and how they shop.
Trust in reviews, news and communication depends on abuse being detected.
Conclusion
Bots are an essential part of the internet, useful and harmful alike.
Protecting a website means letting good bots in and specifically slowing down bad ones.