Automation Bots – The Good, The Bad And The Useful

Many businesses are looking toward automation. Increasing productivity by automating certain repetitive and simple tasks is a great idea, and growing technological advances are becoming more apparent in our day-to-day lives. Automation is critical for many businesses to maintain their competitive advantage and interact better with clients. But what are automation bots, and are they really a good idea for your business and your employees?

In this article, we’ll explore different automation bots and how they can be used for good and bad. While automation robots are great tools, running them alongside residential proxies is more beneficial to increase their usefulness. Click here to learn more about these proxies and their effectiveness alongside robots.

In this article, we’ll be looking at the following topics regarding bots:

• What are automation bots?
• How do these bots work?
• Examples of how bots are used

What Are Automation Bots?

Automation robots are special software programs designed to automate specific and simple tasks. We often get worried when we hear the term ‘bots’ because they’ve collected a rather negative connotation in recent years. However, these robots were initially designed to be help programs, and without them navigating the internet would be a complex nightmare. Despite the good intentions of the original automation bots, some users twist them to create bad bots that can pose different threats to internet users.

How Do These Bots Work?

These bots follow a specific set of programmed instructions to complete certain tasks. They can be programmed to answer simple questions, collect certain data, and more. Let’s take a closer look at how these robots work.

Good Bots

These bots can be used in two ways within a business. They can be used behind the scenes to help with sorting documents, collecting data through web scraping and even managing calendars and social media campaigns. These robots can also be up-front and center at the help desk. Here they can answer user questions 24/7 by linking the user’s concern with the programmed solutions. If they cannot provide a solution, they’ll put the user in contact with another human technician to assist. 

Bad Bots

As the name suggests, these bots are used to wreak havoc on the internet. There are many different types, and they’re all used for different purposes. These robots can spread malware, launch DDoS attacks, steal passwords and other credentials, collect financial information and relay spam. Some malicious bots include:

• Spambots
• Malicious chatterbots
• File-sharing bots
• DDoS bots
• Click fraud bots
• Vulnerability scanners
• Credential stuffing

Examples of How Bots Are Used?

It’s important to know that many different types of bots are available. As technology, AI and machine learning progress, more robots are being developed daily. Let’s look at how some bots are used to improve workplace productivity and efficiency.

Chatbots

These are specialized programs that can simulate conversations. They respond to certain phrases from a set of programmed responses. These robots are often used in help desk capacity and allow websites to offer 24-hour chat support without employing humans to work after normal business hours. 

Social Bots

These specialized programs are used to interact on social media pages similarly to humans. They can like, comment and share content. They are very useful for new businesses to grow their brand awareness and gain a real following quicker by making the content appear sought after. These robots are often run alongside residential proxies, which makes them nearly impossible to distinguish from real users.

ShopBots

Shop bots can automate users’ online shopping and find the best deals on specific items. There are even advanced robots that can monitor a user’s shopping behaviors and customize the site only to include items in which the user would be interested.

Transactional Bots

These useful robots can complete transactions on the user’s behalf. These bots can complete transactions in different external systems. A great example of these is sneaker bots that can make a purchase of limited edition sneakers without any interaction from the user needed, thereby increasing the chances of successfully completing an otherwise difficult purchase. Since these bots contain the users’ financial information, they should be used alongside a residential proxy to add another layer of security. This proxy will also keep the bot from being banned as it will look like a real user.

Spider or Crawler Bots

The bots that started it all. Without the existence of these clever pieces of software, online browsing as we know it would not exist. These robots are responsible for scanning (crawling) through webpages and organizing the information so that they can easily be referenced by search engines when specific search phrases or queries are used.

Final Thoughts

Bots were created to provide a service and complete menial and repetitive tasks, thereby improving productivity. However, despite the existence of many good robots and automation software, some are also used with bad intentions. However, don’t let the bad bunch scare you from trying out these automation tools and experiencing how they can help various industries to automate simple tasks.