AfterX.net

"Bots" is short for "robots" and these are connections to the network to do automated tasks or respond to a message or event on the network.

However, AfterX distinguishes bots into two types - "bots" and "friendly bots" and the difference between the two is the difference between staying connected and being banned from AfteX.

Bots are unwelcome connections to the network and are of disruptive types to annoy users and staff alike, to cause harm to the network by denial of service style of attack, including flooding, causing lags and unresponsiveness of our servers and services and to slow users' responsivity or even cause crashes. The vast majority of these bots are infected computers - drones or popularily known as zombies, centrally controlled by a person, usually a script kiddie. Often these infected computers are used without its owners ever knowing what their computers and internet connections are used for. Sometimes script kiddies aquire a number of bots to form a botnet, ranging from a few tens to a few hundred.

As they are potentially very disruptive to users and staff in their activities, they are GZLined without warning, and often with a limited ban reason or no reason at all.

Spambots are also classed as bots, except they merely spam a website, or another IRC network and often visit many channels on the network to spam a message - so a fast response is needed.

Friendly bots are those which contribute to the chat, add value to the chat/channel and are authorised by a channel owner to sit in a channel. Unauthorised friendly bots can be treated as bots if complaints are passed onto staff.