Botting in the PC world (from an experienced botters perspective)

[AMDPRO]

I have been botting sneakers for over a year now, and have purchased hundreds of items with bots.

Now that the botting world is merging with the PC world, I thought I'd clear some things up, as nearly everything I've seen about botting from PC users perspective is blatantly wrong. 

 

1. The use of Captchas

Captchas do NOTHING to stop bots. Work arounds such as one clicks exist, and the bot opens up the window for the user to solve them manually. Just works to slow down botters and manual users, botters will always still take stock.

 

2. Raffling the cards

I've seen this idea thrown out a lot, but raffle botting is even easier than fcfs botting in some cases

 

3. Accounts/SMS

It is very easy for botters to make multiple accounts, be active on them, and age them. Even if SMS verification is required. As for SMS verification, a shoe store tried that, but bots hit even more, as the backend cookies were the same, making it an easy bypass.

 

The only two sites I've ever seen completely stop bots is the US Nike SNKRS app, partly because its an app, and Shopify, when they really want to. 

 

I really hope this helps. Please ask any other questions about botting you may have in the comments. I just dislike the misinformation being spread and want to help the rest of the community understand. 

[emosun]

I dont think anyone debated as to whether or not bots were capable of buying everything before people could

[AMDPRO]

1 minute ago, emosun said:

I dont think anyone debated as to whether or not bots were capable of buying everything before people could

that wasn't my point haha

 

It was all the people saying its so easy to stop bots and getting mad at nvidia.

Stopping bots is very hard no matter how hard nvidia tries

[emosun]

Just now, AMDPRO said:

Stopping bots is very hard no matter how hard nvidia tries

only sell them retail , bots have been stopped

course retail only sales have the massive problem of being less profitable , like the much struggling barely scraping by oil industry..... /s

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Just now, AMDPRO said:

that wasn't my point haha

 

It was all the people saying its so easy to stop bots and getting mad at nvidia.

Stopping bots is very hard no matter how hard nvidia tries

Lol, but they could just make a guess 1.000.000 random number challangs. If its a human, it will be random. If its a bot, there will be pseudo randomness.

[AMDPRO]

1 minute ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Lol, but they could just make a guess 1.000.000 random number challangs. If its a human, it will be random. If its a bot, there will be pseudo randomness.

bots can make a random number just as easily as a human. Psuedo randomness will  be impossible to detect, worst case bots can have humans manually enter the numbers

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Just now, AMDPRO said:

bots can make a random number just as easily as a human. Psuedo randomness will  be impossible to detect, worst case bots can have humans manually enter the numbers

then its not a bot tho.......

[AMDPRO]

3 minutes ago, emosun said:

only sell them retail , bots have been stopped

course retail only sales have the massive problem of being less profitable , like the much struggling barely scraping by oil industry..... /s

Issue with that is people have work and school haha. Most cards still go to scalpers who have time to go instore. 

[AMDPRO]

Just now, HelpfulTechWizard said:

then its not a bot tho.......

still a bot. If they have multiple instances, all using software to ATC and checkout, they'll still be able to hit more than any human no matter how fast the humans are.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, AMDPRO said:

Issue with that is people have work and school haha. Most cards still go to scalpers who have time to go instore. 

hey, it still stops bot scalpers, and then there are human scalpers, who can have their purchases limited.

[porina]

No "solution" will ever be perfect, so I guess the goal is to reduce the impact of the use of bots for the purpose of buying cards (or whatever) to resell at a higher price.

 

Would it be fair to say a CAPTCHA is only a minor hurdle, in that it prevents fully unattend purchases, and the user can intervene as needed for those parts that can't be automated?

 

2 & 3 I suppose are kinda related. If the goal is to restrict sales, logically the most sensible route is to require unique and hard to acquire information before the sale is entered into. E-mail wouldn't work for example, as that is easy to create near unlimited addresses. Phone numbers are a maybe. Credit card numbers are a maybe. I'm only loosely aware that some "privacy" feature can generate unique numbers for each purchase, but is there a practical limit to the quantity? Delivery address would be another variable. I suppose the question then is, how much of that info above would a customer be willing to give before even having the chance to buy something? Probably not something a store would want to require as routine operation, but maybe only a specific requirement for major product launches such as this. 

 

The above assume the system is implemented correctly and in a robust way, so that other workarounds can't be used.

 

As a further thought, doesn't the use of a bot assume that the bot creator knows in advance how the shopping system works? Could it be frustrated by implementing variations in the checkout process for example. I know, this would only be effective until such time the bot can be updated, but buying a bit of time is all that is needed here.

[emosun]

2 minutes ago, AMDPRO said:

Issue with that is people have work and school haha. Most cards still go to scalpers who have time to go instore. 

release on a sunday.

retail will prevent a single person buying more than one without the help of friends

[AMDPRO]

5 minutes ago, porina said:

No "solution" will ever be perfect, so I guess the goal is to reduce the impact of the use of bots for the purpose of buying cards (or whatever) to resell at a higher price.

 

Would it be fair to say a CAPTCHA is only a minor hurdle, in that it prevents fully unattend purchases, and the user can intervene as needed for those parts that can't be automated?

 

2 & 3 I suppose are kinda related. If the goal is to restrict sales, logically the most sensible route is to require unique and hard to acquire information before the sale is entered into. E-mail wouldn't work for example, as that is easy to create near unlimited addresses. Phone numbers are a maybe. Credit card numbers are a maybe. I'm only loosely aware that some "privacy" feature can generate unique numbers for each purchase, but is there a practical limit to the quantity? Delivery address would be another variable. I suppose the question then is, how much of that info above would a customer be willing to give before even having the chance to buy something? Probably not something a store would want to require as routine operation, but maybe only a specific requirement for major product launches such as this. 

 

The above assume the system is implemented correctly and in a robust way, so that other workarounds can't be used.

 

As a further thought, doesn't the use of a bot assume that the bot creator knows in advance how the shopping system works? Could it be frustrated by implementing variations in the checkout process for example. I know, this would only be effective until such time the bot can be updated, but buying a bit of time is all that is needed here.

Those are all good ideas, but people have ways to generate unlimited custom credit card numbers, use catchall emails with thousands of emails, jig addresses to bypass any address limit to get multiples, and people have access to multiple sms numbers to bot as well. And yes, the developer would need a knowledge of the checkout system before hand in most cases. 

[AMDPRO]

6 minutes ago, emosun said:

release on a sunday.

retail will prevent a single person buying more than one without the help of friends

People do work on sundays, but most cases when this happens in the sneaker industry, a single person will show up with 10 friends/family and take all the products. That happened a lot at gamestops for PS5 allocations. 

[porina]

Just now, AMDPRO said:

Those are all good ideas, but people have ways to generate unlimited custom credit card numbers, use catchall emails with thousands of emails, jig addresses to bypass any address limit to get multiples, and people have access to multiple sms numbers to bot as well. And yes, the developer would need a knowledge of the checkout system before hand in most cases. 

It is not surprising that these ideas have been thought of before, and that there are ways to counteract them. I suppose it is fortunate that for PC hardware at least, big releases with shortages are not very often, so it makes it less affected by this.

[emosun]

2 minutes ago, AMDPRO said:

People do work on sundays, but most cases when this happens in the sneaker industry, a single person will show up with 10 friends/family and take all the products. That happened a lot at gamestops for PS5 allocations. 

1 per group then

seems the bot discussion has long been proven foiled so w/e

[AMDPRO]

1 minute ago, porina said:

It is not surprising that these ideas have been thought of before, and that there are ways to counteract them. I suppose it is fortunate that for PC hardware at least, big releases with shortages are not very often, so it makes it less affected by this.

yea haha, people have made tons of bypasses, nvidia tries it hardest but still got tons of hates for things out of its control 

[AMDPRO]

Just now, emosun said:

1 per group then

seems the bot discussion has long been proven foiled so w/e

haha the difficulty of that to enforce tho

[Mark Kaine]

20 minutes ago, AMDPRO said:

that wasn't my point haha

 

It was all the people saying its so easy to stop bots and getting mad at nvidia.

Stopping bots is very hard no matter how hard nvidia tries

but you countered your own argument with "Nike" and "shopify" being able to stop it "if they want to" which is the point everyone is making NVIDIA (the masters of AI) simply don't / didn't care. 

And as such your OP might be slightly informative (most ppl already knew tho) but ultimately is "missing the point" completely.  no offense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[AMDPRO]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

but you countered your own argument with "Nike" and "shopify" being able to stop it "if they want to" which is the point everyone is making NVIDIA (the masters of AI) simply don't / didn't care. 

And as such your OP might be slightly informative (most ppl already knew tho) but ultimately is "missing the point" completely.  no offense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yes I agree its very possible. But as far as web based sites go, only Shopify has been able to ever stop it, and it only worked on one release last month. Shopify has years and years of data from bots, and owns many botting software to grow and perfect their anti-bot. Nvidia has only had 2 drops. 

[VeganJoy]

4 minutes ago, AMDPRO said:

Nvidia has only had 2 drops.

[Rybo]

The simplest solution is for everybody to just not buy products second hand at or near launch.  Let the botters sit on their inventory for a few months.  This is obviously impossible because we humans are hedonistic and if we perceive something to be 1337, we'll buy it.  

Another option is for the major auction/online sales sites to agree to product embargos close to launch.  This wouldn't eliminate it, but it would drive it underground where buyers are harder to come by.  

Another option would be for us to review bomb anybody selling these high-demand items on eBay so they'd run out of decent accounts to sell their products through.  Or, as some are doing now, bid up the products very high and don't follow through on the purchase.  Sort of a "burn it all down" tactic.  

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, AMDPRO said:

Yes I agree its very possible. But as far as web based sites go, only Shopify has been able to ever stop it, and it only worked on one release last month. Shopify has years and years of data from bots, and owns many botting software to grow and perfect their anti-bot. Nvidia has only had 2 drops. 

Even so the impression remains, they didn't really try - and there could have been solutions developed, like an app even if just temporarily (I'm pretty sure people wouldn't have minded if it was for this reason) 

I also think pre-orders would have actually helped, tho I'm not entirely sure about that.

 

So yes it's possible but "difficult" , it just makes it look there wasn't actually a lot of stock and not a lot of will to stop scalpers.

 

in hindsight a paper launch wasn't actually the worst thing to happen however, with all the issues cropping up now (although the FE cards might be unaffected?)

[Kilrah]

2 hours ago, porina said:

As a further thought, doesn't the use of a bot assume that the bot creator knows in advance how the shopping system works? Could it be frustrated by implementing variations in the checkout process for example.

Why would shops go through the trouble and expense of making changes to their checkout process? They literally have nothing at all to gain from doing so. 

[porina]

50 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Why would shops go through the trouble and expense of making changes to their checkout process? They literally have nothing at all to gain from doing so. 

They have nothing to gain if you assume "any sale is a sale", However they might want to build up goodwill with customers who choose to buy more routine items from them in the future. 

 

The goal is a (relatively) simple measure to hinder bots. It is a given that bots will adapt, but if there's a big launch, then a one-off change first shown the same time the sales go live could "break" existing bots. In the time it takes for the bot creator to update it, the opportunity is reduced.

 

It doesn't have to be too radical a change necessarily. It just had to be enough to implement the above.