Q&A: The (Semi) Secret World of Scalping

Historically, scalping has been considered an underground movement, perpetrated by cybercriminals aiming to make a quick buck. It used to be a fringe activity. But with the popularization of bots, the rise of sneaker culture and item scarcity becoming more common, scalping has gone mainstream and can apply to all kinds of products. The effects of scalping and denial of inventory attacks can now negatively impact e-commerce businesses of any shape and size. Preventing scalping attacks means preserving your customer experience and minimizing brand damage.

It’s easy to underestimate how far scalpers have come. To address this, we’ve prepared a short Q&A.

How much has scalping grown?

According to the Automated Fraud Benchmark Report, scalping attacks peaked at nearly half of total shopping cart requests between March 3, 2020 and January 2, 2021. During some of the latest releases of PS5 stock, PerimeterX processed 1.5 million requests per second, a derivative of the amount of available items, with only a portion of these representing legitimate users. COVID-19 has spurred on the at-home entrepreneur, with many users making a portion of income from the multi-billion dollar reseller market.

Scalpers can choose from a variety of bots, many of which have better customer support than other consumer products and services. The more one spends on a bot, the more likely it is they’ll get the product they want. Sometimes scalpers use proxy servers to speed up their bot’s reaction time to purchase. Some bots are so sought-after that one needs a bot to buy a bot. There’s a resale market for the bots themselves, with prices ranging from the hundreds to thousands for the most effective bots. Companies offering scalping bots are bigger than ever — some could easily be five-figure businesses.

And scalpers aren’t just reselling their items (Read more...)