The word bot is a term that comes from shortening the word robot, and it is nothing more than a computer program that performs repetitive tasks automatically, based on predefined conditions.<\/p>\n\n
The main objective of bots is to replicate human behavior and the actions carried out by people, all of it automatically and at a much higher speed than a person can achieve.<\/p>\n\n
There are good bots, such as those that search and catalog web pages, or recommendation bots; others, on the other hand, are bad, such as those that carry out web attacks or those that collect email addresses for spamming, among others.<\/p>\n\n
Bots consist of a series of algorithms that allow them to carry out actions faster than humans can. They achieve this thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning (they interpret and process human natural language and learn at the same time to be more efficient).<\/p>\n\n
In other words, a bot analyzes a situation and tries to solve it based on its algorithms. There are different types of bots, whose operation and capabilities are adapted to the tasks they are intended for.<\/p>\n\n
There are many kinds of bots, both bad and good, but let’s start by summarizing some of the most common good bots:<\/p>\n\n
– Spider or crawler bots.<\/strong> These are the bots that search engines use to discover pages and offer the best results for the searches made by their users. They crawl the Web, examine the content of the web pages and catalog the results (after processing the content available on the websites).<\/p>\n\n – Shopping bots.<\/strong> They are used to collect information on product prices online, as well as to analyze how users browse a website and tailor offers to each person.<\/p>\n\n – Knowledge bots or “knowbots”.<\/strong> These are bots designed to visit websites periodically and gather information based on specific criteria.<\/p>\n\n – Conversational bots.<\/strong> These are bots that hold conversations similar to those a person would have and return predefined answers based on specific phrases or patterns.<\/p>\n\n – Mass mailing bots.<\/strong> These are used to send the same email to many people (hundreds or thousands) to deliver information that interests them. To send emails to them, you must have their permission or it could be considered spam.<\/p>\n\n – Monitoring bots.<\/strong> They are very common and are used to constantly monitor the status of a system or web page. Generally, their real-time information helps to locate service interruptions and detect malfunctions.<\/p>\n\n Now let’s look at some of the types of bots designed to cause harm. Although some of them can have legitimate uses, they are classified as bad bots because they are mostly used for harmful purposes:<\/p>\n\n – Attack bots.<\/strong> These are botnets that continuously attack servers using multiple computers. The most common of these attacks is the denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.<\/p>\n\n – Bots for buying tickets.<\/strong> Designed to buy tickets for popular events on a massive scale and resell them at much higher prices.<\/p>\n\n – Download bots.<\/strong> They are used to download applications automatically. Their main use is manipulating download statistics and generating fake downloads that make a particular app look more popular in app stores.<\/p>\n\n – Web extractor bots.<\/strong> They are designed to read the content of websites and save a local copy so that it can be reused. But sometimes, they don’t copy the entire content and focus on collecting specific data from the website.<\/p>\n\n Extractors are lawful if the website owner gives permission for their use; otherwise, they can be used maliciously to obtain information without the website owner’s permission.<\/p>\n\n – Brute force bots.<\/strong> These are bots that repeatedly try to gain access to a private area by force, i.e., they try to enter data continuously until they find the correct access information.<\/p>\n\n – Social bots.<\/strong> These bots are found on social media and their main use is to generate opinions, post messages without human involvement, follow other users… in short, to pose as a “normal” account run by a real person.<\/p>\n\n – Spam bots (SPAM BOT).<\/strong> These are bots designed to capture email addresses on the Internet and then send mass emails to all of them without permission (spamming<\/a>). Generally, these emails aim to collect personal information and\/or scam the owner of the captured email address.<\/p>\n\n – Vulnerability bots.<\/strong> These are bots that look for and exploit the errors or flaws found in computer systems connected to the Internet. Those flaws, which can create a security problem, are called vulnerabilities, and this type of bot specializes in finding them.<\/p>\n\n3. Bad bots<\/h2>\n\n
Related entries<\/h2>\n\n
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