Stopping Grinch Bots Act of 2025

Key Points

• This bill would make it illegal to use “bots” or other tools to get around a website’s buying limits or inventory controls, like when a store says “limit 2 per customer.”
• It also targets people who resell items that were bought using these tricks, if they helped with it or should have known the items were grabbed unfairly.
• It would let the Federal Trade Commission go after violators like a consumer scam, which can mean court orders, penalties, and paying money back.
• State attorneys general could also sue on behalf of residents to stop the behavior and seek refunds or damages, though they usually must tell the Federal Trade Commission first.
• Security researchers and people investigating possible violations are carved out, so testing for weaknesses and studying how these systems fail isn’t automatically illegal.