Tonko Calls for Agency to Protect Consumers from Cyber Grinch Bots During the Holiday Season

SARATOGA COUNTY — Congressman Paul Tonko, NY-20, sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan calling for the FTC to take steps to protect consumers and businesses from predatory cyber bots (commonly called Grinch bots) that buy up popular toys only to resell them exorbitantly marked-up prices.

Tonko authored legislation called the Stopping Grinch Bots Act that cracks down on cyber Grinches using “bot” technology to quickly buy up whole inventories of popular holiday toys and resell them to parents at higher prices. These third-party sellers use bots to bypass security measures and manipulate online sales systems to buy toys, leading to some toys being almost impossible to buy online or in stores at retail prices, exacerbating shortages caused by stressed supply chains. 

“This legislation would prohibit manipulative practices that allow the use of bots to circumvent control measures designed to protect real consumers. I urge [the Federal Trade Commission] to do all that [it] can to ensure that this market manipulation does not go unchecked and to prevent these Grinch bots from stealing the cheer away this holiday season,” the letter states, in part.

In 2016, Tonko authored the Better Online Ticket Sales Act (BOTS Act) that was signed into law to ban “ticket bots” that intentionally bypass security measures on online ticketing websites to unfairly outprice individual fans. This new legislation would apply the mechanism of the BOTS Act to e-commerce sites to ban bots bypassing security measures on online retail sites.