Bot Detection Strategies

This cluster focuses on methods to detect, block, and deter bots from websites, debating the effectiveness of tools like Cloudflare Bot Management, honeypots, captchas, and proof-of-work, while addressing challenges from sophisticated bots and potential countermeasures.

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Keywords

RAM BotSentinel SYN JS F5 robots.txt PRER JVM MSS IP bots bot requests detection blocking tcp drupal captcha spammers malicious

Sample Comments

adrianN Jul 15, 2019 View on HN

All bot detection is doomed to fail, but you can make it more expensive for the bot authors.

cute_boi Nov 10, 2021 View on HN

actually this is good because it helps to mitigate bot somehow.

ma2rten May 28, 2017 View on HN

I don't quite see the connection. How exactly does this deter bots?

JimmyRuska Jul 10, 2023 View on HN

Protect yourself from sophisticated bots, which can mess up your traffic reports

graeme Jul 25, 2024 View on HN

Anyone have any experience with this? Is there nothing but upside in blocking these bots

Sebguer Jun 4, 2022 View on HN

To prevent bots from causing bandwidth costs to be insane?

WrtCdEvrydy Nov 12, 2020 View on HN

I'm currently looking into this with a twist for bot deterrence.

buildbot Sep 21, 2022 View on HN

Devil's advocate - would it not then be pretty easy to engineer malicious bots to avoid detection?

tiborsaas Jan 7, 2020 View on HN

There are some limits, but as a human user you likely won't hit it. They are good at catching bot traffic.

ATechGuy Apr 17, 2025 View on HN

Why detect "bots" when you can block them using captchas/proof-of-work solutions. Curious to know your use case for detecting bots.