Bots are programs that are capable of performing automative tasks. Bots might not be malicious, but in recent times they have been primarily used for malicious purposes only. A computer acting as a bot when aggregated with several other such computers is called a botnet, and primarily called a spam botnet. Spam botnets are used to spread spam emails and initiate DDoS attacks on servers; they may or may not have web scrapers spidering that automatically gather data.