When Resultly's bots started scraping QVC's website, the retail giant felt the pain immediately. Server crashes, website downtime, angry customers—and an estimated $2 million worth in lost sales, according to QVC’s internal estimates.1 While the resulting lawsuit was eventually settled out of court, the damage was already done.
QVC's tale is a cautionary one for online retailers and e-commerce entities. You may think your business is safe from web scraping, but our latest research tells a different story. The 2025 Analysis of Threat Actor Behavior report reveals that retail is now the fourth most targeted industry by bad bots and other automated threats.
In particular, the growing scourge of web scraping is hitting retailers where it hurts. Competitors and fraudsters are deploying ever-more sophisticated scraping bots to steal precious pricing data and product information. The fallout is devastating—crashing websites, plummeting conversion rates, reputational damage and millions in lost revenue.
Amidst this onslaught of automated abuse, retailers can't afford to sit back and play defense. It's time to go on the offensive against web scraping before it bleeds your business dry. By combining the right technology with a proactive, multi-pronged strategy, you can safeguard your data, protect your competitive advantage and keep customers happy.
The High Cost of Scraping for Retailers
You know how valuable the data scraped from your retail website is. Pricing information, product details and inventory levels make up the secret sauce that powers profitability and keeps your customers coming back. In the wrong hands, however, it becomes a weapon for competitors to undercut you and fraudsters to game the system.
But scraping's impact extends far beyond data theft alone. The bots used in these attacks pummel retail websites with automated requests, overwhelming servers and crashing sites. For consumers, this can mean frustrating lag times, broken pages and abandoned purchases. For retailers, it's the stuff of nightmares: lost traffic, wasted marketing spend and eroded consumer trust.
Even if your website withstands the onslaught, scraping can still skew your analytics and sabotage your business intelligence. Bad bots masquerade as human visitors, artificially inflating metrics like traffic and session duration. Decisions made on this contaminated data can send your strategy in the wrong direction, fast.
Spotting the Signs of a Scraping Attack
So how do you know if scrapers are siphoning your data? While some attacks are subtle, most will trip observable alarms. Keep an eye out for these indicators:
- Unusually high traffic from unfamiliar IPs or geographies: Scrapers often use multiple IP addresses or proxy servers to distribute their requests and avoid detection.
- Sluggish website performance and intermittent downtime: The high volume of requests generated by scraping tools can strain server resources, leading to slower response times and potential downtime.
- Abnormal usage patterns: Scrapers may access pages or data in a systematic, repetitive manner that differs from typical user behavior, such as rapidly accessing many product pages in sequence.
In addition, if your website requires login credentials to access certain content, scrapers may attempt to create multiple accounts or guess login information to bypass these restrictions and/or to appear more like legitimate users and avoid detection. In this case, upticks in failed login attempts or unexpected new account registrations may also indicate a scraping attack.
If any of these red flags appear, it's crucial to act quickly. The longer scraping persists, the more damage it inflicts. Investigate the source of the activity and engage your IT and security teams to lock down gaps.
A Multi-Pronged Approach to Fighting Web Scraping
Once you suspect a scraping attack is underway, a swift and comprehensive response is critical. Start by shoring up your legal defenses:
- Update your terms of service and privacy policy to explicitly prohibit scraping.
- Send cease and desist notices to any entities you identify scraping your site.
- Assert your intellectual property rights over your data and content.
However, with the most determined scrapers, legal deterrents will only get you so far. You need to bolster your policies with robust anti-bot protections. Unfortunately, traditional tools like IP blocking, rate limiting and basic CAPTCHAs are easy for modern scraping tools to circumvent. Scrapers will rotate IPs, mimic human behavior and often solve puzzles faster than real users.
To stay ahead, you need a multi-layered anti-scraping solution that leverages advanced machine learning to constantly adapt to new threats. The most effective platforms focus on:
- Accurately detecting bots while minimizing false positives
- Defending APIs and mobile apps, not just websites
- Mitigating all automated threats, from scraping to credential stuffing
- Preserving a friction-free experience for legitimate customers
- Providing granular attack analytics and reporting
The longer you leave your data exposed, the more ground you cede to competitors and fraudsters. It's time to draw a line in the sand and take proactive steps to shut scraping down. The Arkose Scraping Protection solution makes it easy.
A Stronger Line of Defense Against Scraping
Arkose Scraping Protection is a purpose-built platform for global enterprises to safeguard your most valuable web assets from unauthorized scraping. Our multi-layered approach stops even the stealthiest bots in their tracks:
- Server-Side Savvy: Arkose Scraping Protection integrates at the API level to defend endpoints where client-side JS isn't feasible. It's truly full-spectrum defense.
- Real-Time Risk Assessment: The Arkose Labs decision engine analyzes a wealth of signals to instantly spot signs of scraping. You'll know who's attacking, how and why.
- Adaptive Challenges: High-risk requests are routed to our battle-tested Arkose Bot Manager solution for escalating cryptographic challenges. Bots break down, humans pass through.
Don't Let Scrapers Steal Your Competitive Edge
Web scraping is a hidden tax on your commercial success. You've poured blood, sweat and tears into perfecting your products, honing your marketing, and cultivating your customer relationships. That hard-earned intellectual property is the lifeblood of your competitive advantage.
Don't let bad bots bleed your business dry. With Arkose Scraping Protection, you can slam the door on data thieves and keep your competitive edge razor sharp. To learn more about how Arkose Labs can fortify your defenses against bots, reach out to us today.
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