Having trouble scheduling a COVID-19 vaccine appointment? You are not alone. To deal with this, some people are turning to bots that scour crowded sites and send alerts on social media when the slots open.
They provided relief for families by helping older relatives find scarce consultations. But not all public health officials think it is a good idea.
In rural Buckland, Massachusetts, two hours west of Boston, a vaccine clinic canceled a day of appointments after learning that out-of-town residents caught almost all of them in minutes thanks to a Twitter alert. In parts of New Jersey, health officials have added measures to block bots, which are said to favor tech connoisseurs.
WHAT IS A VACCINE BOT?
Bots – basically standalone programs on the web – emerged amid widespread frustration with the online world of vaccine markings.
Although situations vary by state, people often need to check the websites of several providers to see available times. Weeks after the start of the launch, the demand for vaccines continues to exceed the supply, complicating the search even for qualified people, as they update the consultation places to get a space. When a coveted spot appears, many discover that it may disappear in the middle of the reserve.
The most notable bots scan websites of vaccine providers for changes, which could mean that a clinic is adding new consultations. Bots are often overseen by humans, who then post alerts about openings using Twitter or text notifications.
A second type that is of most concern to health authorities are “money changer” bots that can automatically make appointments, potentially to put them up for sale. So far, there is little evidence that climbing robots are making appointments.
ARE VACCINE BOT ALERTS HELP?
Yes, for the people who use them.
“THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I GOT A NAME FROM MY FATHER! THANK YOU SO MUCH!” tweeted Benjamin Shover, from Stratford, New Jersey, after securing an appointment on March 3 for his 70-year-old father with the help of an alert from the Twitter account @nj_vaccine.
The success came a month after enrolling in the New Jersey state online vaccine registry.
“He doesn’t know much about technology,” Shover said of his father in an interview. “He is also physically disabled and has arthritis, so it is difficult for him to find an appointment online.”
The bot’s creator, software engineer Kenneth Hsu, said his original motivation was to help arrange a meeting for his own in-laws. Now, he and other volunteers have established a broader mission to help others who have been left out of New Jersey’s messy online nomination system.
“These are people who just want to know that they are on a list somewhere and that they will be helped,” said Hsu. “We want everyone to be vaccinated. We want to see our grandparents. “
WHAT DO HEALTH OFFICERS THINK?
Bots have encountered resistance in some communities. A bot that alerted Massachusetts residents about a clinic this week in sparsely populated Franklin County has prompted many people in the Boston area to apply for vacancies. Local officials canceled all appointments, switched to a private system and spread the word through senior centers and city officials.
“Our goal was to help our residents get vaccinated,” said Tracy Rogers, emergency preparedness manager for the Franklin Regional Council of Governments. “But 95% of the consultations we had were from outside Franklin County.”
Union County in New Jersey has placed a CAPTCHA prompt on its scheduling system to confirm that visitors are human, blocking efforts to “manipulate” it with a bot, said Sebastian D’Elia, a county spokesman.
“When you post to Twitter, only a certain segment of society will see that,” he said. Even if they are trying to help someone else, D’Elia said that others cannot afford to be defended.
But the person who created a bot that is now blocked in Union County, 24-year-old computer programmer Noah Marcus, said the current system is also unfair.
“The system was already favoring the tech connoisseur and the person who can just sit in front of the computer all day, pressing the update button,” said Marcus.
D’Elia said the county is also scheduling telephone consultations to help those who may have problems online.
HOW DO THEY WORK?
Marcus used the Python coding language to create a program that scans the website of a vaccine clinic, looking for certain keywords and tables that indicate new queries. Other bots use different techniques, depending on how the target site is built.
This type of information gathering, known as web scraping, remains a source of bitterness. Basically, scraping is collecting information from a website that its owner does not want to be collected, said Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Some web services have taken web scrapers to court, claiming that scraping techniques violate the terms and conditions of access to their websites. A case involving bots that stole LinkedIn profiles is before the United States Supreme Court.
“There are disagreements in the courts about the legality of web-scraping,” said Kerr. “It is a shady area. It’s probably cool, but it’s not something we’re sure about. “
WHAT ABOUT SCALPER BOTS?
The website for a mass vaccination site in Atlantic City, New Jersey, says its online queuing system – which keeps people waiting on the site while slots are assigned – is designed to prevent it from crashing and bots not to get commitments “from real people. “But is this really happening?
Creating a bot that can actually make appointments – not just detect them – would be much more difficult. And websites often ask for information such as a person’s date of birth to ensure that they are eligible.
Pharmacy giants Walgreens and CVS, which are increasingly giving people injections in the United States, have said they are working to prevent such activity.
Walgreens said it is using cyber security techniques to detect and prevent bots, so that “only authorized and eligible patients have access to schedule a vaccine appointment.” CVS Health said it found several types of automated activities and designed its scheduling system to validate legitimate users.
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