Threat Groups:

Invalid Bot Activity:

A bot is a software program that performs automated, sometimes repetitive, predefined tasks. Bots typically imitate or replicate human behavior. These non-human tools can be used for malicious purposes, such as false-clicks or other types of fraud.

Bot activity is detected by analyzing network / browser and more parameters and characteristics, and identifying fingerprints of non-human activity.

Regardless of why a specific bot was created, it is not a real user and therefore cannot turn into a customer and cannot contribute to your customer acquisition efforts in a meaningful way.

Invalid Malicious Activity:

Malicious activity is a set of, excessive, non-standard or false identity actions performed by users with the intent of damaging your online performance.

These types of activities that have a harmful impact on your digital efforts are detected by analyzing the user’s behavior and characteristics. Sometimes malicious users are competitors who want to run your campaigns out of budget or give you misleading data. Malicious users could also be trying to steal information or hijack accounts.

Threat Types:

Invalid Bot Activity Threat Types:

• Scrapers: Scrapers are used for content scraping from web applications. A web scraper extracts underlying code as well as stored data. This extracted information can then be used to retrieve business intelligence, replicate the service, and more.

• Automation Tools: Tools that are used to perform automatic activity. Their activity is usually done repetitively, fast, and at scale. Such activity can be executed sometimes for malicious purposes such as false clicks and fraudulent display of web-placed advertisements (ads).

• Account Takeover: An account takeover can happen when a fraudster poses as a genuine customer, gains control of an account, and then makes unauthorized transactions. Any account could be taken over by fraudsters, including bank, credit card, email, and other service providers.

Invalid Malicious Activity Threat Types:

• Excessive Rate Limit: An excessive number of clicks on ads that is performed by users posing as legitimate users but without any intention of following through and converting.

• False Representation: False Representation such as User Agent Spoofing is the situation where the user’s information is modified to hide and lie about its real characteristics and identity. It is most often seen with bots trying to hide their tracks, but some malicious human users will occasionally engage in this way as well.

• Disabled Cookies: Disabling the browser’s cookies is common with bots and fraudsters. Users that have their cookies disabled will not be able to use most of the website’s functionality. This means that these users would not be able to progress within the funnel and most likely will not convert.

• Network Anomalies: User traffic that includes one or more attributes (e.g., IP, user cookie) associated with known irregular patterns, such as non-disclosed auto-refresh traffic, duplicate clicks, and attribute mismatch.