Wednesday, December 16, 2020

A look at the bots scalpers are using to buy up PS5 stock

WaPo:

His tools that morning included a bot he bought for $250. He ran it on a virtual server in Virginia, which offered a faster connection than he could muster from his laptop at home.

...

[He] operates proxies to obscure his IP address, and even created slightly tweaked versions of his shipping address, to avoid having multiple orders look suspicious.

...

Captchas, short for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart,” are the quizzes that are supposed to detect bots. But [the scalper]’s tool kit has ways around those, too, including a subscription service that farms out Captchas to humans who fill them out in real time.

...

[His] next four PS5 wins came thanks to a $500-a-month service from a company called Fulcrum that gives him instant updates on what’s in stock and hidden on parts of retailer sites visible only to search engines and bots. 

...

The United States is considering legislation based on the 2016 BOTS Act, which made it illegal to use the software to scalp tickets