Adafruit, an official reseller of Raspberry Pi computers, has mandated account verification and two-factor authentication in an effort to prevent bots from gaining limited supply.
In a blog post, Adafruit explained that it hopes to give customers the ability to buy Raspberry Pis and other in-demand items at market prices, without having to compete with automated robots for inventory.
"Please note! We now require a verified account with two-factor authentication enabled to purchase certain high-demand products, such as Raspberry Pi computers, due to the high number of buyer bots, making it difficult for manufacturers and engineers to place orders .these products,” says a notice on Adafruit's product listings.
"Make sure you have a verified Adafruit account and enable two-factor authentication. Finally, you'll need to log out and back in to enable account verification.
Raspberry Pi shortage
In December, we reported on the continuing shortage of the latest Raspberry Pi models. At the time, resellers felt they wouldn't be able to ship some of the more popular SKUs until 2023.
Several factors combined to create the shortage, including the allocation of limited chipmaking capacity to larger players and shipping issues caused by supply chain bottlenecks.
However, the problem has been compounded for regular consumers by resellers, who use bots to pick up whatever supplies hit the shelves, in order to sell them for a huge profit on secondary markets.
A similar problem has made it extremely difficult to obtain the latest graphics cards and video game consoles, some of which have been resold at exorbitant prices by resellers.
"Any time a product is out of stock, you'll see bots trying to grab stock to resell it for a margin," Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton told ZDNet. "It's parasitic behavior and it's great to see people like Adafruit taking steps to stop it."
Upton previously said he expects supply chain challenges to continue "through much of 2022," with the issue expected to become less acute as more manufacturing capacity comes online and logistics bottlenecks are resolved. .