The German foreign ministry, which commissioned the study after suspecting it was being targeted by bots, said the findings highlighted the need for governments to systematically tackle the growing number of disinformation campaigns and recognise the effect they could have on elections.
Time zone is just one indicator that doesn’t says much by itself. However if you have a handful of indicators, it becomes easier to positively identify bots.
Fraud detection for online shops works in a similar way, where they check your location, IP, delivery address and other metrics to assign a risk score to each order.