51Percent 'Non Human' Traffic Haunts Internet


51Percent 'Non Human' Traffic Haunts Internet

Bangalore: With cyber threats becoming more frequent, this piece of news could prove to be eye-opening: apparently more than half of all web traffic is from automated, non-human software programs such as hacking tools and spam.

What makes this fact interesting is that human users of websites suffer since servers have to deal with them as well as the influx generated by non-human entities as well. This means websites carry large burdens of hidden cost in terms of bandwidth, and face the increased risk of business disruption.

According to Incapsula (the provider of cloud-based security for web sites, which conducted the research), only 49 percent of all traffic showing up for websites’ visitors are actual human beings, while non-human traffic generated by a myriad of non-human entities such as hacking tools generate 51 percent of all website traffic.

The breakdown of website traffic, according to the data Incapsula collected from a sample of 1000 company websites using its security services, showed that scrapers (spam websites that copy all of their content from other websites) made up for 5 percent of all traffic, while 19 percent was generated by spies and crawlers (which collect documents from the web to build a searchable index for a search engine), and automated comment spammers took up 2 percent of traffic. 5 percent of website traffic was accounted for by hacking tools which look around on websites for exploitable vulnerabilities, and 20 percent came from search engines which is not dangerous, but still contributes to non-human traffic crowding your website.

Since 51 percent of all traffic is accounted to non-human traffic, which is harmful, and 20 percent came from harmless search engines, around 30 percent of all traffic clocked is malicious; which should be a matter of concern to anybody having a website.