Scalper bots are used to acquire goods or services online that are in limited availability. It’s similar to a person scalping tickets at a sporting event or concert, however, a person would not be able to scalp online manually. Scalper bots monitor the availability of goods online and then obtain those goods faster than a person is able to. One of the byproducts of scalping is a user denial of service as these goods become unavailable very quickly in the application.
Alternate Names and Examples:
Bulk purchase
Purchase automaton
Purchase bot
Restaurant table/hotel room reservation speed-booking
Queue jumping
Sale stampede
Ticket resale
Ticket scalping
Ticket touting
Potential Symptoms:
• Traffic spikes for limited availability goods
• Increased circulation of limited goods resold in a secondary market