Everyday, bots access your website. How should you protect yourself against their attacks? There is no one-size-fits-all bot defense solution as each website may be compromised for different reasons and in different ways.
But there are certain proactive actions you may take that should help alleviate some of this concern and these techniques could prevent bot attacks on your website.
In this blog, we discuss techniques for preventing websites from bot attacks and much more. Keep reading for further insights.
Techniques Which Prevent Websites From Bot Attacks

Block out-of-date user agents and browsers or utilize CAPTCHA: Many tools and scripts contain outdated user agent string lists as part of their default setups, though this won't deter more experienced attackers; rather, it might catch and demoralize some.
Since modern browsers allow auto-updates for their users, banning outdated user agents or browsers carries minimal risk.
Here we have outlined the crucial strategy prevents websites from bot attacks:
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Reputable proxy and hosting companies: Inexperienced hackers often utilize easily accessible hosting or proxy services as part of their attack tactics; more skilled attackers tend to move onto harder-to-block networks instead.
By blocking access from these sources, it may deter them from targeting your website, mobile application, and API.
- Protect every point of entry for malicious bots: Make it possible for all systems involved to share blocking information when necessary and to take precautions for protecting mobile apps and APIs in addition to websites; protecting only one can leave backdoors accessible, allowing more malicious activity into the network.
- Analyze traffic sources carefully: Keep a close watch over all sources of traffic. Which sources experience frequent bounce backs or have lower conversion rates than others could indicate bot activity.
- Examine traffic spikes: Although traffic spikes might appear beneficial to your company, are they hard to explain? An inexplicable one could indicate malicious bot activity and should be thoroughly researched first before drawing any definitive conclusions about its source.
- Track unsuccessful login attempts: Create an initial baseline, and keep an eye out for any irregularities or spikes that appear over time. Set alerts so you are informed immediately should any such attacks take place - setting global thresholds may help since advanced "low and slow" attacks do not trigger user or session alarms.
- Keep an eye out for an increase in gift card number validation failures: A surge in validation page failures could indicate that GiftGhostBot bots are trying to steal gift card balances by exploiting vulnerabilities.
- Keep an eye out for public data leaks: Credentials that were recently stolen are more likely to be actively used by malicious bots against your website if significant breaches occur anywhere. If significant breaches take place anywhere, expect malicious bots to use those credentials more often against it than expected.
- Consider a Bot Mitigation Solution: An arms race lies at the core of bot issues. Every day, individuals engage in malicious attacks on websites across the internet with bots that pose an expensive burden on IT people and resources alike due to an increase in volume, sophistication and commercial damage caused by automated attacks. Today's bots can bypass standard security technologies by mimicking human behaviors; for this reason, it is wise to review mitigation providers who possess both industry experience and attentive assistance that provide visibility over abusive traffic.
Prior To Bot Defense: Five Typical Types Of Bot Assaults

Here we have outlined the typical types of bot attacks:
Web Scraping
Extracting information and content from a website quickly is known as web scraping or content scraping. Web scraping is a common task for skilled bots, and content scraping in and of itself is lawful.
On the other hand, ticket scalping bots and related scrapers may cause issues. In general, web scraping can result in a number of problems, such as:
- In the event that rivals steal your pricing data and utilize it to lower your rates.
- When a web scraper extracts confidential or secret data, you may lose important information.
- This might strain the network and negatively impact the speed of your website.
- By republishing content that has been scraped, the attacker may cause duplicate content issues or outrank you in search engine results with your content.
Websites and enterprises involved with price-sensitive industries, like booking hotel rooms or tickets online, are particularly susceptible to web scraping attacks.
Competitors could utilize bots to scrape pricing data off your website to undercut you; as a result, their rivals will rank highest on price comparison websites.
Signs of an attack by scraper bots on websites include:
- Your conversion rates have declined.
- Your rivals often outbid you on pricing.
- Your material has been published elsewhere.
Brute Force Attacks
A brute force attack involves attempts at guessing login credentials of systems or accounts by making repeated and aggressive attempts with vastly differing combinations of username/password combinations, usually carried out using automated bots that process this data significantly faster than humans could.
Such attacks typically use brute force tactics as part of their attack method, as bots can enter these combinations much more rapidly than humans do.
Credential stuffing is a form of brute force attack in which an attacker attempts to access other accounts using stolen credentials they obtained through data leakage from one company or service (for instance, Facebook using credentials taken from Google), often with surprising success due to using similar passwords and email addresses across numerous websites - leading them directly into credential stuffing attacks.
- An attack using brute force against your website might look something like this:
- An unexplainable rise in unsuccessful login attempts. An increase in account lockouts and failed login attempts.
- And an unexpected surge in chargeback requests (for online purchases).
Spam
As everyone knows, spam problems exist worldwide. Bots use various means to spread it - from creating free accounts on websites, they may register with to sending unwanted comments into any areas where such blog comments and forms exist - often through bots registering themselves as free users and then spamming accordingly.
Recently however, various bots are also found flooding social media networks with content, making multi-platform bot avoidance even more necessary.
Signs of an attack against an entire website by spam bots include:
- An unusual spike in new accounts being opened.
- And an upsurge in spam complaints.
Credit Card Cracking And Related Fraud
Just like brute force attacks, bots can analyze credit card details that have been acquired to detect missing data (CVV numbers or expiry dates), as well as try to steal money by asking about gift card balances - leading to lost amounts on consumer accounts.
If your website also sells gift cards, then malicious bots might attempt to make money by asking about card balances for purchase; in these instances, amounts lost could include consumers.
The global gift card market was estimated by Statista to be worth 320 billion dollars in 2017 and was expected to grow to 510 billion dollars by 2025. Signs of an attack by carding bots on websites include:
- Increase in Calls to Customer Service
- An Increase in Chargeback Requests and Inquiries.
- Boost in Gift Card Balance Inquiries.
DoS/DDoS
Botnets conduct denial-of-service attacks that attempt to overwhelm your server with numerous requests, overloading its resources and rendering your website unavailable or slow.
When this occurs, legitimate visitors won't be able to access it - while unintended DDoS assaults could occur; for example, aggressive scraper bots might generate excessive requests that cause downtime for websites they serve - so having enough DDoS protection measures in place should prevent such scenarios from arising.
Signs that your website is being targeted with DDoS:
- Increased traffic spikes on specific resources
- It has led to an upsurge in client grievances and complaints from existing and new customers alike.
Read More: The Importance of Web Development for Online Businesses
How To Completely Halt And Prevent Bot Assaults On Your Website

Below, we have outlined the crucial solutions that prevent bot attacks:
Invest In A Bot Mitigation Solution
Investment in appropriate bot detection and mitigation software to defend your website is of utmost importance in stopping and avoiding bot attacks.
With internal solutions and WAF rules alone, "good enough" bot attack mitigation was feasible several years ago; today, however, identifying malicious bots requires quite specific knowledge.
What features make up an adequate bot protection solution? Depending on your industry, risk tolerance, website architecture, etc, here are a few considerations:
- Now is the time to protect: Your priority should be stopping any bot attacks as quickly as possible if they have occurred; look for solutions which you can implement immediately rather than those which require long negotiations in order to receive assistance.
- Quality of Detection: A bot protection system's main role is preventing bot attacks on your website, so test several potential solutions concurrently on actual traffic before seeking evidence from potential vendors regarding their detection efficiency.
- An effective bot protection system should operate secretly: No drastic rerouting of DNS or significant modifications of applications should be necessary, depending on your server architecture and design. "One-click" installation solutions might even be possible.
- Make sure the dashboards of all potential solutions provide ease of use: Check their dashboards carefully; how easy (or difficult) is it for you to recognize bot traffic patterns or detect traffic from bots? And is switching on and off security or adding partner bots easy (or complex)?
- Ideal bot management solutions: It should completely free you of bot management responsibilities and let you stop fretting over potential attacks on your website in future. However, in case the perfect solution hasn't yet been identified for your website.
Monitor Your Traffic
Monitor your site traffic at least for the following important metrics:
- Traffic Spikes: One telltale sign of bot activity could be any sudden traffic surges lasting less than seven days (with certain exceptions such as when introducing new products onto your site, in which case traffic spikes should be anticipated).
- Untrustworthy Sources: Bot traffic typically arises from new user agents and sessions which do not originate through Google searches or advertising clicks; multiple queries coming from one IP address should serve as an early warning of bot activity.
- Bounce Rate: An increase in bounce rate could signal that bot visitors only want to complete one activity on your site before quickly departing again.
Block Data Center IPs
Although more experienced attackers may now rely on more complex networks and servers for attacks, less experienced cybercriminals still rely on hosting and proxy servers that can easily be stopped - something many times used during other kinds of assaults in the past.
Collect a list of known data center IP addresses, then use those IPs to block or Captcha requests from bots. While less effective and likely to lead to false positives (i.e.
actual people being blocked), this temporary solution might still prove worthwhile as an interim workaround solution.
Block Older User Agents And Browsers
User-agent lists in many easily available bot scripts and tools have out-of-date user-agent lists that don't protect websites against less sophisticated bots from attacking while being inadequate against more complex, advanced attackers.
Therefore it is wise to block older browser versions which have been around more than three years; those dating back even two can be Captcha protected if possible.
Conclusion
Reducing bot traffic with static or passive restrictions alone will no longer suffice for effective bot attack mitigation on websites with moderately large traffic volumes.
A suitable bot management solution must have the capability of identifying and blocking even skilled attackers to reduce bot attacks from occurring and future effectively.
An efficient bot mitigation system must provide tailored responses tailored to all kinds of bot attacks - it should offer distinct and well-managed response mechanisms tailored specifically for every attack type, offering distinct, well-managed responses tailored specifically for individual types if any occur - ultimately saving enough money that it pays its costs through reduced infrastructure costs, less time spent combating assaults, user complaints etc.