ad抢夺角色_Instacart购物者被抢夺丰厚订单的机器人所包围

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By Lizette Chapman and Kartikay Mehrotra

由Lizette Chapman和Kartikay Mehrotra

Lisa Marsh’s job shopping and delivering groceries for Instacart during the past three years has been unforgiving. Company tipping policies cut into earnings while boycotts and other labor strife created confusion, she said.

过去三年里，丽莎·马什(Lisa Marsh)为Instacart购物和运送杂货的工作真是令人宽容。 她说，公司的小费政策削减了收入，而抵制和其他劳工冲突造成了混乱。

Then the global pandemic hit, transforming once mundane trips to Los Angeles grocery stores where she lives into a palpable health risk.

后来，全球大流行病袭来，曾经寻常的一次去洛杉矶杂货店的旅行变成了她明显的健康风险，她在那里生活。

In recent weeks, another problem has emerged: bots that snatch the largest, most lucrative orders out of the hands of other shoppers.

近几周来，出现了另一个问题：机器人从其他购物者手中夺走了最大，最有利可图的订单。

Here’s how it works. Instacart pays contract workers to shop for groceries and deliver them to customers. Normally, the shoppers open the Instacart shopping app and, as orders flash by, click on the ones they want to fulfill. But in order to gain an edge, some shoppers are paying software developers who have created bots — in the form of third-party apps — that run alongside the legitimate Instacart app and claim the best orders for clients.

运作方式如下。 Instacart支付合同工购买杂货并将其交付给客户的费用。 通常，购物者会打开Instacart购物应用程序，并在订单闪烁时，点击他们想要履行的订单。 但是为了获得优势，一些购物者正在向软件开发人员付款，这些软件开发人员以第三方应用程序的形式创建了与合法的Instacart应用程序同时运行并为客户争取最佳订单的机器人。

In this way, the app tilts competition between shoppers but is invisible to customers and doesn’t take business away from Instacart either. The cost of the third-party apps ranges from $250 to $600 in cryptocurrency or bank deposits, according to the darkweb research firm, DarkOwl.

通过这种方式，该应用程序可以吸引购物者之间的竞争，但对于客户而言是不可见的，并且也不会使Instacart失去业务。 根据Darkweb研究公司DarkOwl的数据 ，第三方应用的成本在250到600美元之间，不包括加密货币或银行存款。

When Marsh opens her Instacart shopping app, she sees promising orders disappear before she can act. “No human can click that fast,” she said. “Instacart needs to fix this. These bots are literally taking the food off my kids’ table.”

当Marsh打开她的Instacart购物应用程序时，她发现有希望的订单在采取行动之前就消失了。 她说：“没有人能如此快地点击。” “ Instacart需要解决此问题。 这些机器人实际上是在把食物从我孩子的餐桌上拿走。”

While bots aren’t a new problem for Instacart, the recent deluge is different because it comes at a time of white-knuckled expansion for the San Francisco-based startup. The company said customer demand for grocery delivery has surged more than 500% during the pandemic, notching growth its investors didn’t expect until 2025. This makes the platform, which hasn’t expanded its team as fast as its revenue, an attractive target for hustlers.

尽管对于Instacart而言，机器人程序不是一个新问题，但最近的大洪水却有所不同，因为它是在旧金山初创公司面临白费周折的扩张之际发生的。 该公司表示，在大流行期间，客户对杂货店交付的需求激增了500％以上，达到了投资者直到2025年才期望的增长。这使得该平台的吸引力没有达到其收入增长的最快速度。对于骗子。

A spokeswoman for Instacart Inc. said the bots affect just a sliver of its more than 500,000 shoppers and that the company has already taken measures to address the issue.

Instacart Inc.的一位发言人说，这些自动程序仅影响其超过500,000名购物者中的一小部分，该公司已采取措施解决了这一问题。

“We take the integrity of the Instacart platform very seriously and have a trust and security team dedicated to monitoring the unauthorized use of the platform which includes all efforts to prevent illicit and fraudulent third-party apps from violating our terms of service,” said Natalia Montalvo, Instacart’s director of shopper engagement and communications.

纳塔利说：“我们非常重视Instacart平台的完整性，并拥有一支信任和安全团队，专门负责监视该平台的未授权使用，其中包括为防止非法和欺诈性第三方应用程序违反我们的服务条款而做出的一切努力。” Instacart购物者参与和沟通总监Montalvo。

Instacart said it’s combating bots by cranking up pressure against app makers and banning violators when they find them. The company said it deactivated 150 shoppers found to be misusing the platform and shut down a half dozen sites claiming to sell batches to Instacart shoppers including Instashopper.app, Sushopper, Ninja Hours and Acrobatshopper.

Instacart表示，它通过加大对应用程序制造商的压力来打击机器人，并在发现它们时禁止违规者。 该公司表示已停用150个被发现滥用该平台的购物者，并关闭了六家声称向Instacart购物者出售批次的站点，其中包括Instashopper.app，Sushopper，Ninja Hours和Acrobatshopper。

The developers of those apps couldn’t be located for comment.

找不到这些应用的开发者发表评论。

Instacart also recently introduced new procedures such as prompting shoppers to verify their identity with a selfie and not permitting shoppers to switch devices in the middle of an order. Shoppers using the updated app can also choose to review a single order for 30 seconds before claiming it or passing it to another shopper.

Instacart最近还引入了新的程序，例如提示购物者使用自拍照验证其身份，并且不允许购物者在订单中间切换设备。 使用更新后的应用程序的购物者还可以选择先查看单笔订单30秒钟，然后再申领或传递给另一位购物者。

“As a result of these measures, we’ve seen a dramatic reduction in the use of unauthorized third-party apps because of the hard work and dedication by our security and legal teams to protect the shopper experience,” Montalvo said. Instacart also this month enlisted the help of security platform HackerOne to battle bots by offering a bounty program, she said.

“由于采取了这些措施，由于我们的安全和法律团队为保护购物者的体验而付出的辛勤工作和奉献精神，我们已经看到大量使用未经授权的第三方应用程序，”蒙塔尔沃说。 她说，Instacart在本月还邀请安全平台HackerOne通过提供赏金计划与机器人进行战斗。

But as security experts at Amazon.com Inc. and other sites have discovered, battling rogue apps is a lot like playing whack-a-mole. As soon as a company thwarts one bot program, a new version of it emerges, usually with a new name.

但是，正如Amazon.com Inc.和其他站点的安全专家所发现的那样， 与流氓应用程序作斗争就像打地鼠一样。 一旦公司阻止了一个机器人程序，它就会出现一个新版本，通常使用一个新名称。

“If Instacart cared — if it was losing money — they could devote resources to make the jobs of these automatic snipers much harder,” Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert, author and lecturer at Harvard University, said there are ways for companies to detect such bots. “This is a problem that any company that makes money from automation is likely being forced to deal with. Some handle it well. Others don’t.”

哈佛大学网络安全专家，作家兼讲师布鲁斯·施耐尔 ( Bruce Schneier )表示：“如果Instacart关心-如果它正在亏损，他们可以投入资源使这些自动狙击手的工作变得更加困难。”机器人。 “这是一个问题，任何从自动化中赚钱的公司都可能被迫应对。 有些人处理得很好。 其他人则没有。”

In recent months, different Instacart shopper-related apps have come and gone, sometimes using slightly varied titles, such as Ninja Hours, Ninja Shoppers and Ninja Shopper. DarkOwl discovered nearly a dozen active platforms in mid-May advertising openly on YouTube and social media platforms, including Reddit. Digital breadcrumbs linked these sites back to users spanning the U.S., including New York, Savannah, Georgia and Northern California’s wine country, according to DarkOwl. Others linked to an apparent Brazilian app developer syndicate that leans heavily on YouTube ads narrated in Portuguese, the research firm concluded.

近几个月来，与Instacart购物者相关的各种应用程序风起云涌，有时使用的标题略有不同，例如Ninja Hours，Ninja Shoppers和Ninja Shopper。 DarkOwl在5月中旬发现了将近十二个活跃的平台，并在YouTube和社交媒体平台(包括Reddit)上公开广告。 根据DarkOwl的说法，数字面包屑将这些网站链接回遍及美国的用户，包括纽约，萨凡纳，乔治亚州和北加利福尼亚的葡萄酒之乡。 该研究公司得出结论，其他人与一个明显的巴西应用程序开发商集团相关，该集团严重依赖以葡萄牙语讲述的YouTube广告。

The developer of those apps couldn’t be located for comment.

找不到这些应用的开发者发表评论。

Some of the apps work, others are scams, according to DarkOwl. The Bitcoin wallet linked to the site of Ninja Shoppers indicates its owners have received 76 deposits — about $20,000 — including many from Instacart shoppers desperate to jumpstart their stalled shopping careers.

根据DarkOwl的说法，其中一些应用程序有效，其他应用程序则是诈骗。 链接到忍者购物者网站的比特币钱包表明其所有者已收到76笔存款(约20,000美元)，其中许多来自Instacart购物者，他们迫切希望开始陷入困境的购物生涯。

The apps are typically available on websites published by their developers. In the case of Ninja Shoppers, the app is free to download, but users must be ‘’activated in a private group” in order to be granted permission to pay for a user authentication token, according to their website, which is published in English and Portuguese. Once logged-in, the program prompts the user to find Instacart sales available near their location, according to a YouTube video viewed more than 13,000 times since May 9.

这些应用通常可以在其开发者发布的网站上找到。 根据Ninja Shoppers的网站，该应用程序可以免费下载，但必须以“在私人群组中激活”用户的身份才能授予用户支付用户身份验证令牌的费用，该网站以英文发布。和葡萄牙语。 根据YouTube自5月9日以来观看了13,000次以上的视频，该程序登录后，会提示用户在其所在位置附近查找Instacart销售。

Despite Instacart’s efforts to crack down, finding a permanent solution may be difficult. Earlier this month, one man using the Instacart shopping app, who said he’s been using a bot since March, offered to install it on another shopper’s phone for $250, plus a $130 weekly recurring fee, according to screen shots of a conversation in late July seen by Bloomberg. When reached by phone earlier this week, the man spoke first in Portuguese and then in English, confirming to Bloomberg he was selling a bot for those amounts. He declined to answer additional questions after learning that the information would likely be publicized.

尽管Instacart做出了努力，但要找到永久解决方案可能仍然很困难。 本月初，一个使用Instacart购物应用程序的人表示，自三月以来一直在使用机器人，并提出以250美元的价格将其安装在另一位购物者的手机上，加上每周130美元的定期费用。彭博社看过 当本周早些时候通过电话联系时，该名男子先讲葡萄牙语，然后讲英语，向彭博社证实，他正在以这些价格出售机器人。 在得知该信息可能会公开之后，他拒绝回答其他问题。

Fear of getting deactivated or scammed out of money has stopped some shoppers from spending money on the apps. Others like Santa Cruz-area grandmother Ginger Colgate said she refuses to do so on moral grounds.

由于担心被停用或被骗掉钱，一些购物者无法在这些应用上花钱。 其他人，例如圣克鲁斯地区的祖母高露洁(Ginger Colgate)说，她出于道德理由拒绝这样做。

“It’s just not right. It’s against the rules,” said Colgate, complaining that her earnings dropped from $1,800 a week to $300 because the bots have siphoned the best work. Colgate said she still sometimes drives to Costco and opens the Instacart app, hoping for work.

“这是不对的。 这违反了规则，”高露洁说，她抱怨说自己的收入从每周1800美元下降到300美元，因为这些机器人一直在努力工作。 高露洁说她有时仍然开车去Costco并打开Instacart应用程序，希望能上班。

“So many times I sit with tears in my eyes in the parking lot just waiting and hoping to get an order,” she said. “I’ve basically given up.”

她说：“我无数次坐在停车场眼泪含泪，只等着希望能下订单。” “我基本上已经放弃了。”

翻译自: https://medium.com/bloomberg/instacart-shoppers-besieged-by-bots-that-snatch-lucrative-orders-c3db892a25d0

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