Anti-bot: What It Is And How to Bypass It- NetNut

Introduction

The evolution of AI has gradually become mainstream for online businesses, especially with chatbots. Many companies leverage bots to perform repetitive tasks, increase efficiency, and optimize productivity. Subsequently, it allows them to direct their efforts to other operations.

Critical but repetitive tasks like web data extraction require using bots for efficiency. Meanwhile, some cybercriminals may use bad bots for malicious activities, like sending spam messages to collectors identifying information that could be used for cyber theft. According to Statista, about 30.2% of all internet traffic is generated by malicious bots. 

Therefore, it does not come as a surprise when companies implement strict anti-bot techniques to protect themselves and their customers.

Data is an essential aspect of a successful digital business. So, how can companies manage these anti-bot measures? This guide will examine anti-bot measures, how they work, how to bypass them, and FAQs. 

What Is An Anti-Bot?

In simple terms, anti-bot is designed to identify bots and block their access to certain services. Anti-bot systems utilize various techniques like CAPTCHAs, browser fingerprinting, and header validation to identify human and bot behavior. A characteristic of good bots is that they only collect publicly available data.

These anti-bot technologies can prevent credit card fraud, DDOS attacks, and credential stuffing. Therefore, many websites try to avoid bots to protect data privacy and user experience. As a result, your scraper may also be blocked.

Although bots are getting a bad reputation, some are incredibly useful. In fact, Google crawlers are bots and play a significant role in search engine results.

How Does Anti-bot Work?

Before you can solve a problem, you need an in-depth understanding of its mechanism of action. Therefore, we shall examine some anti-bot techniques and how they work.

Header validation

When you want to access a website for whatever purpose, like data scraping, your browser sends a request. However, the request is accompanied by the header, which contains several values. Each browser, such as Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, has its unique header patterns. Subsequently, header validation can be used as an anti-bot technique. It involves analyzing the headers associated with requests to identify suspicious patterns and anomalies. Therefore, if the system detects anything that makes your header suspicious, it is treated as a bot and blocked. The anti-bot system will block your request if the header field does not have the correct values or they are in an incorrect order.

You can bypass header validation to avoid triggering the anti-bot mechanism by:

• Rotating the values so that each request seems to be coming from a different user
• Sniffing the request made by your browser to learn how to populate HTTP headers
• Customizing the headers of web scrapers with actual values.

Browser fingerprinting

Browser fingerprinting is another challenge experienced by web scraping bots. This anti-bot technique works by collecting identifying data from your device. The information often involves browser plugins, fonts, screen resolution, and other information. Subsequently, it generates a unique fingerprint of your browser, which is then associated with the browser’s IP address via cookies.

This poses a big issue because the cookies and fingerprint remain the same even when you change the IP address. As a result, the anti-bot measures will be triggered, and your IP address will be blocked.

You can use headless browsers or stealth plugins to avoid browser fingerprinting from triggering the anti-bot.

CAPTCHA

Completely Automated Public Turing Tests to tell Computers and Humans apart, commonly called CAPTCHA, is another popular ant-bot technique. It presents a challenge that tests if a user is a human or a bot. These challenges are often hard for bots to complete, thereby an excellent anti-bot measure that prevents bots from accessing a service.

Solving a CAPTCHA often includes typing the numbers or alphabets displayed in a distorted image or selecting the images of a required item. However, you can bypass this block using a  CAPTCHA proxy solver.

IP address tracking

 Another widely used anti-bot technique is IP tracking. It works by tracking all the requests a website receives. Therefore, if too many requests come from the same IP address within a short time, the system blocks it. This happens because only a bot can be used to achieve that level of speed in sending requests, and this triggers the anti-bot measures.

 In addition,  the IP block can be triggered if the request comes in at a consistent regular interval. This is only possible with a bot because human users do not browse in such a manner. 

The system observes the IP behavior to determine IP reputation. The system takes note of too many requests sent from the same IP address. Therefore, the use of a residential proxy server with your scraper becomes essential. 

To bypass IP bans, define a proxy dictionary indicating the HTTP and HTTPS connections. 

Location-based blocking

 This anti-bot technique involves blocking requests from IP addresses associated with a specific geographical location. This feature is often used by companies who want their products and services to be available in some countries. In addition, the government can use this method to block access to certain websites in their country.

 Location-based anti-bot blocking is implemented at the ISP or DNS level. Subsequently, you may get an error response when you try to access the web page. It works by analyzing the IP address to determine your location and decide if you are a welcome guest or you should be locked out. Therefore, you need an IP from one of the permitted countries to bypass geographical restrictions. 

 An excellent solution to this problem is to use a rotating residential proxy server with a large IP pool. This allows you to choose a country that is allowed to visit the restricted site. Subsequently, the website will read your request as coming from one of the permitted locations.

TLS fingerprinting

 TLS (Transport Security Layer) is another anti-bot measure that websites use to prevent access by non-human users. TLS fingerprinting works by analysis of parameters exchanged during a TLS handshake. The TLS allows for end-to-end encryption communication between the server and the client. 

Therefore, if these do not align with the expected ones, the anti-bot system is triggered because the request is assumed to be coming from a bot. Subsequently, it blocks the request, which poses a significant challenge, especially for web scraping activities. This problem can be solved with the use of headless browsers.

How To Avoid Anti-Bot

 Now that we understand the anti-bot mechanism of action, we must learn how to avoid them. Here are some practical ways to avoid getting detected and blocked as a bot:

Read the robots.txt file

Since we have argued about the ethical use of some bots, it becomes necessary to consider what behavior makes them ethical. Before you access a website, especially with a web scraping bot, be sure to read the robots.txt file. 

This file is a standard form of communication that clearly states the pages or files that you can search and those you should not. When you respect the instructions in the robots.txt file, your scraping bot will not trigger the anti-bot measures that often lead to blocking.

Limit the frequency of the request 

Sending too many requests within a short time is a red flag that screams “bot.” Therefore, it will certainly trigger the anti-bot mechanisms to block your request and subsequent ones. If you are using web scraping bots, you need to implement delays so that your activities are similar to human activity. This does not affect the efficiency of the scraping process but ensures you continue to receive real-time data. 

Modify user agent 

Another method to bypass anti-bot is to modify the user agent. The User-agent is a string that allows the website to recognize the browser and operating system where the request is coming from. Therefore, modification of the user agent is necessary to make the request seem like it is coming from a regular user.

Use a headless browser 

The use of headless browsers can help you bypass anti-bot techniques. These browsers are controllable web browsers without a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Headless browsers allow your scarper bot to behave like a human user by doing things like scrolling, taking screenshots, and scrolling. Therefore, using this method can help you bypass anti-bot techniques.

Pay attention to data protection protocols

To avoid anti-bot, it is necessary to understand data protection laws in your state and country. Although some data are publicly available, collecting and using them may incur legal consequences.

These laws may differ according to your location and the type of data you want to collect. For example, those in the European Union must abide by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which prevents scraping of personal information. Subsequently, it is against the law to use bots to gather people’s identifying data.

Use a web scraping API 

Using a scraping API is like killing two birds with one stone- it optimizes the data extraction process and avoids anti-bot. NetNut Scraper API is a powerful tool that allows you to bypass anti-bot systems that are designed to prevent data scraping. 

Proxy server

Another essential tip to bypass anti-bot is the use of proxy servers. Since the common result of anti-bot measures is an IP block, you can avoid this by routing your network traffic through a proxy server. The use of rotating proxies distributes your scraping request across various locations, which hides your real IP address. In addition, proxies help to maintain anonymity and optimize security during online activities. 

Choosing a Reliable Proxy Provider- NetNut

One of the practical steps to bypass anti-bot is using a reliable proxy from a reputable provider. NetNut has an extensive network of over 52 million rotating residential proxies in 200 countries and over 250,000 mobile IPS in over 100 countries, which helps them provide exceptional data collection services.

NetNut offers various proxy solutions designed to effectively bypass anti-bot and optimize your browsing experience. In addition, it bypasses CAPTCHAs with ease and allows you to access geo-restricted content.

NetNut rotating residential proxies are your automated proxy solution that ensures you can access websites despite geographic restrictions. Therefore, you get access to real-time data from all over the world that optimizes decision-making.

Alternatively, you can use our in-house solution- Netnut Scraper API, to access websites and collect data. Moreover, if you need customized proxy solutions, you can use NetNut’s Mobile Proxy. 

Conclusion

Advancements in AI and machine learning have paved the way for the use of bots in various sectors. Regardless of any bad reputation regarding bots, they have some usefulness for some businesses. In this article, we have examined anti-bot and how they work to provide useful insights on how we can avoid triggering these measures.

Header verification, CAPTCHA, and browser fingerprint are some anti-bot measures that often lead to IP blocks. However, following the practical steps on how to avoid anti-bot in this article will make a difference.

For optimal protection, choose NetNut proxies for guaranteed CAPTCHA bypass, IP rotation, and accessing geo-restricted content.

Kindly contact us to get started with the best proxy solution for your needs.  

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a bot?

A bot is a computer program designed to automate certain tasks and imitate human activity. They are usually employed to ensure accuracy and accuracy of repetitive tasks. This is to eliminate inconsistencies arising from human errors. A bot can either be good or bad. Good bots are useful for various purposes, while bad bots are employed for malicious activities.

 What is the difference between a legitimate web scraping bot and malicious bots?

The difference between good and malicious bots falls back to their functions and behaviors. A web scraping bot is designed to automate the extraction of publicly available data. On the other hand, malicious bots aim to collect data for unethical purposes like data theft and DDoS attacks. 

In addition, good bots often respect the rules of a website when collecting data. However, malicious bots do not and go on to scrape data that is not supposed to be collected.

Are bots essential to businesses?

 Bots have several usefulness for businesses, including:

• Generating leads
• Increase sales
• Save cost
• Improves customer engagement
• Optimizes the process of recruitment
• Available as 24/7 support for customers
• Multilingual support
• Faster response rate