SMRTR TechFeb 12, 2026Wired

A Wave of Unexplained Bot Traffic Is Sweeping the Web

SMRTR summary

Since September, websites worldwide have been flooded by mysterious bots appearing to originate from Lanzhou, China and Singapore, creating massive fake traffic that accounts for over half of some sites' total visits. These disguised bots, likely connected to AI companies scraping data for machine learning models, are causing financial harm by inflating bandwidth costs and damaging advertising revenue for website owners.

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