Scalping is the practice of buying scarce, high demand products like concert tickets or the latest sneakers and immediately reselling them at a higher price. Scalpers have developed techniques that allow them to buy these products extremely quickly, often within seconds of them becoming available. This lets them buy up limited inventory before regular consumers can purchase the products for themselves.
Some of the key questions around how scalpers operate so quickly include:
How do scalpers obtain inventory so fast?
Scalpers use bots and automated checkout software to purchase inventory faster than any human could. As soon as a limited product drops, their bots go through the checkout process and claim the available inventory.
How do the bots work?
The bots scalpers use are automated software programs customized for purchasing products online extremely quickly. They can fill out forms, solve CAPTCHAs, and process payments faster than a person clicking and typing manually. This gives them a major speed advantage.
Where do scalpers get the bots?
Many scalpers either build their own bots using programming languages like Python or they purchase bot services from underground marketplaces. These black market bot sellers are constantly innovating to try and stay one step ahead of retailers.
How do scalpers pay so quickly?
Scalpers have their payment information already loaded into their bots so that as soon as inventory is claimed, they can checkout instantly. This means connecting bots to PayPal accounts or having credit card information pre-loaded.
Technical Methods Scalpers Use
Let’s explore some of the specific technical tools and methods scalpers employ to purchase inventory so rapidly:
Web Crawlers
Scalpers use web crawler programs to scour websites and instantly find when a product drops. As soon as the target product appears in the site HTML code, they can deploy their purchase bots.
Cloud Computing
Scalpers often rely on cloud computing platforms like AWS to run a high volume of bots in parallel. The immense scale of the cloud allows them to have an army of bots waiting to buy.
Proxies
To mask their traffic and avoid detection, scalpers route their bots through proxy servers and residential IP addresses. This makes their traffic appear more human.
CAPCHA Solvers
Advanced OCR and machine learning algorithms allow scalper bots to solve CAPCHAs extremely quickly. This eliminates a barrier regular users have to deal with.
Concurrency
Scalper bots run many parallel threads so they can process website responses instantly without waiting. This concurrency model is much faster than a human’s linear clicking.
Why Scalping Works
There are a few key reasons the scalpers’ technical tools provide such a major advantage:
Speed
Plain and simple, bots are exponentially faster at placing orders than humans manually checking out. Their scripts, websockets, and payment processing run in milliseconds.
Ruthlessness
Unlike regular consumers, scalpers are willing to break terms of service and invest in banned tools and techniques like bots. This gives them an edge.
Market Incentives
As long as there is demand for limited sneakers, tickets, etc. scalpers have financial incentives to keep perfecting their methods. The secondary market creates rewards.
Defenses Against Scalpers
While scalpers may seem unstoppable, there are certain precautions retailers and consumers can take to limit their success:
CAPTCHA Improvements
New CAPTCHA designs like reCAPTCHA’s dynamic challenges can identify and block common scalping tactics. But it remains an arms race with bot makers.
Product Limits
Limits like 1 or 2 units per customer make scalping more labor intensive and less profitable. But this also impacts normal customers.
Randomized Releases
Launching sales at surprise random times can catch bot armies off guard and make their efforts obsolete for that product. However, scalpers may start running their bots 24/7 to combat this.
Canceling Suspicious Orders
Analyzing factors like shipping address, account age, and purchase speed can help identify scalper bot purchases and lead to cancelations. But this can be resource intensive.
The Future of Scalping
Looking ahead, a few predictions can be made around the future of the escalating war against scalpers:
More Advanced Bots
As long as profit motive remains, scalping groups will continue investing in new circumvention methods. The bar for bot capabilities will keep rising.
Anti-Bot Legislation
Governments like the United States may consider anti-scalping laws if the practice becomes sufficiently disruptive to society. But enforcing such laws poses challenges.
Decentralized Sales Models
Blockchain technology offers potential for new product release models that cut out middlemen. This could reduce the single point of failure scalpers currently target.
Subscription Models
As more goods from sneakers to cars shift to an ongoing subscription model of ownership, the concept of limited releases starts to dissipate. This fundamental shift may damage the scalping business model.
Conclusion
In summary, scalpers gain their speed advantage through a cold-blooded technical approach that prioritizes automation and efficiency over playing by the rules. Consumers and retailers do have certain options to try and impede them, but scalpers show no signs of stopping their efforts as long as opportunity remains. New technologies and business models may alter the playing field over time, but the cat-and-mouse game is likely to remain fierce in the years ahead.
