Have your say on government e-petitions

Ban the use of bots to make purchases on websites

Submitted by Connor Lewis Lancaster on Thursday 27th November 2025

Published on Wednesday 14th January 2026

Current status: Open

Open until: Tuesday 14th July 2026

Current Signatures: 89
(count is updated approximately hourly)

Relevant Departments

Tagged with

Assist ~ Assisted ~ Cards ~ Cost ~ Demand ~ Effective ~ Grey ~ Illegal ~ market ~ Paper ~ Price ~ Regulations ~ retail ~ Sale ~ security ~ Stock ~ Stock market ~ Ticket ~ Toilet ~ Unethical

Petition Action

Ban the use of bots to make purchases on websites

Petition Details

Make bot-assisted online purchasing illegal by expanding the 2018 Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations to cover all high-demand goods, including collectibles like sneakers, trading cards, and even essentials such as toilet paper.

Additional Information

We believe hobbies like sneaker collecting and trading card games now resemble the stock market, with bots bypassing purchase limits to secure multiple items. We feel captchas are no longer effective as bots have evolved beyond them, creating a grey area under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We also believe this practice is harmful and unethical, as it can inflate prices by allowing items bought at retail to be resold at a higher cost.


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repetition.me is a Good Stuff website

216.73.216.219 Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:05:25 +0100