Bot Detection
The set of techniques websites use to tell automated traffic apart from real human visitors, combining IP reputation, fingerprints, and behaviour signals.
Full Definition
Bot detection is a multi-layered defence system that websites and CDN services (like Cloudflare, Akamai, and Imperva) deploy to distinguish automated requests from genuine human traffic. Signals used include: IP reputation and ASN classification, TLS and browser fingerprints (JA3, HTTP/2 fingerprint), mouse movement and scroll patterns, timing between requests, CAPTCHA challenges, honeypot links, and cookie/JavaScript execution checks. Modern bot-detection engines use machine learning to score each visitor and decide whether to allow, challenge, or block them. Successful web scraping requires defeating or evading most of these signals simultaneously.
