The Grinch Doesn’t Take a Break After Christmas

We all know the story behind the Grinch and how the spirit of the holidays made his heart grow 10x the size. Since the holiday season is behind us, let’s go over the story of the Grinch Bot and how their pockets grew 10x size from the holiday promotions. We know Santa works hard, but the Grinch Bot works harder

We’ve said this once and say it again; these bots are out-clicking, out-typing, out-smarting CAPTCHA (yes, humans struggle with this more than bots), and most importantly, out-winning us. So, what makes Grinch Bots different from traditional resellers? One, it’s the holiday season, and we are already cramming to buy our last-minute family gifts of their animals on their holiday sweaters. Two, we already know that 41% of all internet traffic during this period was bots, but CAPTCHA did not do much to deter. Three, even though Christmas is over, the Grinch bot is still out and about.

Grinch Bots have two outcomes: either they resell the product and profit or return the product. Right now, Grinch Bots are returning all the products they couldn’t resell and prowling for discounts for the next holiday season (Spring Festival, Valentine’s Day). So, while stores are getting inundated with costly returns from the products that did not sell, these sneaky little ones are using all the promotion codes to continue on their cyclical journey. Do these bots ever sleep!?!?

We already know what it feels like to work post-holiday; nobody has time for it. Our mission here at BotNot is to ensure that Grinch Bots can’t ruin your Christmas or take advantage of any discount code. Fortunately, these grinch bots are quite clumsy and leave their fingerprints in multiple areas. This makes the internet a giant game of Clue — we know the murder weapon, location, and who it is.

Identifying and protecting against Grinch Bots has been challenging, as they easily get through firewalls and are not flagged by fraud systems. Beyond stealing all of your Christmas presents and causing last-minute shopping parents to freak out, Grinch Bots are ruining the holidays for the e-commerce business too. Huh, aren’t the businesses still making a sale? Why would they care who gets it?

Technically, yes. However, Grinch Bots have a cascading negative impact on these brands: frustrated customers, increased returns, and bad data for business decisions. The unknown and underlying effects from Grinch Bots significantly outweigh the benefits of a couple of early sales.

So imagining the holiday season 2022, you are sipping your Hot Toddy by the fireplace, and you just installed BotNot. This means no grinch bots getting your products, your customers can be rewarded, and you have clean data to forecast your actual consumer for future holiday periods. I know — it sounds too good to be true, but why not give it a try. Sometimes your biggest wishes can come true too. As for now, Grinch Bot is so 2021, and we’re ready for them all season.

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