The AI Agent Identity Crisis: 80% of Agents Don’t Properly Identify Themselves, 80% of Sites Don’t Verify

DataDome’s research finds that 80% of AI agents don’t provide verifiable identity and 79.7% of 698,214 tested sites allowed a spoofed ChatGPT-style user agent, enabling attackers to impersonate trusted bots to scrape data, test stolen credentials, and conduct web exploits while corrupting analytics; the report urges adoption of cryptographic bot authentication (e.g., Web Bot Auth, Visa TAP, Mastercard Agent Pay) and real-time behavioral analysis to validate agent identity and detect malicious intent.