Initially designed to perform simple and repetitive tasks, online robots allow their users to perform several tasks simultaneously, on a much larger scale than they could perform alone, “manually”.
Examples are the bots used by Internet search engines, which vp compliance email lists automatically scan the millions of pages on the web, classifying and making the content available in the search engine's database.
Bots now account for more than half of internet traffic
The presence of bots on the internet has become increasingly intense, increasingly constant, to the point that they currently represent more than half of all online traffic. According to data from an annual survey conducted by the digital security company IMPERVA, which has been analyzing network traffic since 2012, in 2016 bots represented 51.8% of network traffic. Of this, 22.9% was carried out by “good bots” and 28.9% by “bad bots”, which raises a very serious alert regarding issues related to network security.
The attack of robots on the Internet
The topic of bots has gained greater visibility in recent times, even among those who are not very aware of digital tools, mainly due to their supposed role played in the US presidential elections, as well as in the Brazilian elections.
The presence of these robots, especially on social media, would have influenced the behavior of several voters, as these bots would have been responsible for the massive dissemination of questionable content , the so-called fake news .
Bots can be used for other questionable purposes, such as carrying out attacks on websites and servers with the aim of temporarily taking them offline (DDoS attack), or even stealing information from a database.
There are also bots that scour information on e-commerce sites, seeking to destroy their competitive advantages, and bots that are responsible for making comments on websites and blogs.
Another very dangerous type of bots are those used in phishing attacks , capable of directing distracted users to fraudulent internet pages, which are usually very similar imitations of the original websites of trustworthy companies, thus managing to obtain passwords and banking details.
The good robots
It is worth making it clear that not everything is dangerous and evil on the internet. There are many benefits to be gained from the conscious and correct use of bots, a tool whose existence is fundamental to the dynamics of the internet as we know it today.
As we have already mentioned above, search engines such as Google , Yahoo!, Bing! and many others would never be able to maintain such a large and up-to-date database without the help of robots, which are capable of traversing and classifying an immense amount of information in a short space of time.
In addition to using robots to carry out searches in search engines, an interesting application that is becoming increasingly common is their use as chat bots.
Chat bots are robots that can hold conversations with users, using sophisticated algorithms to identify words, phrases and contexts and then return the answers sought. This tool has become increasingly popular on the websites of several companies, reducing costs with online support and making the company's human resources available for other areas with greater demand.
Some bots are gaining prominence, such as Instamais. By automating interactions between your profile and potential audience, it promises to grow your fan base on Instagram , as people will start following you spontaneously.
