Humans make up less than half of internet traffic

[spacefem]

So this is kinda sad, but not all that surprising:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technolo ... fic/49967/

By one study's measure, slightly more than half of all the Internet's traffic comes from computers not being used by fleshy humans that might actually purchase products. That's according to study released today by Incapsula, an Internet security firm, begging the question: What exactly does Internet traffic from a "non-human" look like? Incapsula is here to explain: "hackers, spambots, scrapers and spies of sorts collecting proprietary business information and customer data from unsuspecting websites."

The traffic breakdown:

5% hacking software looking for site vulnerabilities to gather credit card info or use your server as a DDoS bot
5% scrapers copying content from sites to post it on their own
2% spambots
19% competitive spies
20% search engines (Google, Bing, etc)
49% actual people

So, actual people reading this, I'd like to thank you!

[Sonic#]

Oh no, Cylons all over the place!

I wonder what the raw numbers are. Are there far fewer bots that work tirelessly to trawl the internet?

[sagermo]

yikes. I recently installed an add-on that shows what trackers are on the websites you visit and blocks them. It's pretty shocking how many some websites have. Spacefem is clean Here's the link if you want to get or learn about it, I'm not very good at describing the technical details. http://www.ghostery.com/

[ladyhawk]

Only 2% are spam bots. It appears that all of them have discovered spacefem. And 75% of those spam bots really like a certain brand of shoe.

[LunchBox]

Those are scary statistics although I'm betting programmed web crawlers for non-malevolent reasons weren't even factored in. So in an ordinary site even less than that 49% would be actual humans unless crawlers are counted in hacking software.

I've gotten in trouble for boosting a research lab's website due to a bug I had in a work related crawler involving it looping through the website infinitely. It doubled their visitor count within a couple days; I was so horridly embarrassed. That's the only reason I think of it in relation to traffic counts.

[Aum]

I hope the internet maintains some of its freedom in the coming years. It is becoming so corporatized and controlled by government.