Translated it for you via DeepL: The online shop of a small shoe shop in Frankfurt records almost 700,000 hits when a rare sneaker is on offer. Bots buy them i

Translated it for you via DeepL: The online shop of a small shoe shop in Frankfurt records almost 700,000 hits when a rare sneaker is on offer. Bots buy them in bulk and later sell them at even higher prices. Recently, however, they only buy pictures of the shoes - a trick that seems to work. The co-founder of the skater shop Bonkers Martin Schreiber has developed a strategy to trick bots and automatic scripts when buying online. Instead of coveted Nike shoes, he simply put their product images online for 10 euros each - including a matching description. Bots nevertheless ordered them a thousand times automatically. The reason: Online shoppers buy limited edition shoes like the Nike SB x Parra within milliseconds and later sell them to collectors for a multiple. This not only generates frustration among customers, but also up to 700,000 online accesses to the shop, which look like a DDoS attack. Schreiber told the German skatemagazine Soloskatemag in an interview: "So we said that we would now also show our middle finger and sell digital pictures of our shoes. ## 7.000 Euro for 100 pictures The trick seems to have worked, because several buyers have often bought pictures of the products - 70 Euros for seven pictures each. Apparently one of them was a person who placed 100 orders and spent 7,000 euros. The complaints and cancellation requests via Paypal were not long in coming. However, Paypal did not refund the price because the product description was not misleading. Finally, the product title had clearly indicated that these were pictures of shoes and not shoes themselves. "But of course such a bot does not recognise this," says Schreiber. He had refunded the money to some reasonable people in the form of a voucher. Schreiber had previously informed Nike of the action and obtained the manufacturer's consent. It had also been announced well in advance in their own blog and in social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook. He wants more shops to follow this example in order to be a deterrent for bot users. However, it is not difficult to program them with some rules and restrictions to avoid such traps.