Bots on the Z-Wear Shaman lookout thread?

[SleeplessInSoCal]

At the bottom of the Z-Wear Shaman lookout thread page, where it shows who’s online, there are these three users: Bing [Bot], Google [Bot], Majestic-12 [Bot]

Are those actual bots, waiting for links to be posted? If so, shouldn’t they be cleaned out?

Sorry if I’m wasting everyone’s time, and this isn’t what it seems.

[kerrcobra]

I think they're just SEO bots for search engines crawling the forums to keep updated search results. Also, I'm pretty sure it's not specific to the topic - as I see them in here. It's just a list of members and guests that are signed in.

[steelcity16]

They are always here. I think they are webscraping bots or something. Feeds the search engines. Something like that. These bots are our friends. The bad bots are sitting on the dealer websites waiting to pounce!

[SleeplessInSoCal]

They are always here. I think they are webscraping bots or something. Feeds the search engines. Something like that. These bots are our friends. The bad bots are sitting on the dealer websites waiting to pounce!

Thanks guys! Sorry for the false alarm.

[p_atrick]

These are spider bots or web crawlers. Nothing nefarious about them. Bots to purchase a knife would scrape dealer pages and auto-fill/submit the information for the purchase. At least, I think that's how they work. Never made a bot to purchase stuff before.

[beard0x0]

Do "purchase bots" even really exist, or are they a figment of imagination used to justify missing out on a drop? Anybody have personal experience?

[TazKristi]

Do "purchase bots" even really exist, or are they a figment of imagination used to justify missing out on a drop? Anybody have personal experience?

Yes, yes, they do. Unfortunately.

Kristi

[Wartstein]

Do "purchase bots" even really exist, or are they a figment of imagination used to justify missing out on a drop? Anybody have personal experience?

Yes, yes, they do. Unfortunately.

Kristi

Well, but YOU do exist too... bad for the bots, great for us...
Thanks, Kristi! :)

[spydie-fan]

Can reCaptcha software prevent bots from purchasing? There has got to be an easy way to prevent them from buying.

Preventing them from notifying users of recent drops would seem to be harder to accomplish.

[TazKristi]

Can reCaptcha software prevent bots from purchasing? There has got to be an easy way to prevent them from buying.

Preventing them from notifying users of recent drops would seem to be harder to accomplish.

Hi, spydie-fan:
Unfortunately, no. We used specific software to prevent bots from purchasing during our online Factory Seconds Sale in December. There is no "easy" way. If there were, the bots wouldn't be an issue for anyone.

Kristi

[JMM]

The ones like Bing and Google bots are completely normal, they are on many, many forums & they are not buying bots.