6 min to read
Bots are responsible for nearly half of the world’s website traffic, and even though there are many different types of bots, they all have other purposes for serving.
For instance, good bots will help you with important services, and bad bots will try to do excessive damage to your business. However, sometimes, even good bots can pressure your server resources when they aren’t appropriately managed, leading to many issues and slowing down your website’s loading speeds.
Well, to break it short, bad bots can do excessive damage, and what can you do to stop them?
Let’s find out more in this article!
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1. Identify the problem
You have a big concern with bots and are wondering how these bots are harming your site. Before you go any further, it’s always important to see what is happening on your site.
Are you continuously having an issue with bots, or do you only see an increase in activity?
So, if you recently discovered that a bunch of bad bots is infecting your site, you want to act quickly to solve this problem, or else your site won’t function properly. So, after you identify the problem, it’s now time to start following the other steps for taking action.
2. Sign-up authentication
If your website involves extended usage of user accounts, a sign-up authentication can significantly reduce the number of bot accounts that want to register. Let’s not forget that only last year, there was a 148% increase in attacks from bad bots.
Sign-up authentications will usually use an e-mail address or phone number with a verification code before the user signs up. Authentication is easy for people but difficult for bots!
Moreover, it lets admins know whether or not the new users have verified accounts because those who don’t verify their accounts are often fake.
3.Use CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA is a default method of verifying whether a user is legit. CAPTCHA is excellent but isn’t effective enough against advanced attackers, but even at times, it’ll be able to stop those advanced attackers as well.
However, keep in mind that the chance of trying to stop outdated users is really low. Most modern browsers will include auto-updates for users, making it more difficult for users to surf the web on outdated versions.
4. Investing in a bot management solution
Most modern-day bots are malicious and have the right bot management solution to perform behavioral analysis in case you want to block bots on a server or website effectively. Seek bot management solutions that properly utilize both AI and ML technologies for detecting real-time bot activities and can detect bots on autopilot.
5. Stay up to date
Staying up to date can be one of the most important points of preventing bad bots. Nevertheless, this is why you should keep your website and integrations up to date within the specific release dates.
Whichever CRM you use, it’s important to ensure that you stay updated since older bots tend to gain access to older versions. For example, if you are using WordPress, make sure you use the latest plugins and themes.
Staying up to date has its own advantages, but let’s not forget that the latest updates may come with increased security features and bot blocker options.
6. Comment moderation
It’s important to check any comments on your site regularly. Why so? Because you might encounter comments that are damaging your sites, such as spam comments that include wrong links and more.
In order to avoid this, you can set up a manual comment moderation in case you are undergoing severe issues with bots continuously spamming your website. Nevertheless, it can take a while to moderate comments manually, but it’s the only way to free your bots and spam entirely.
7.Block proxy services and known hosting providers
Even if the most advanced attackers manage to move too many more complex block networks and use easily accessible proxy services and hosting. If you don’t allow access to these sources, it might dis-encourage attackers from coming back to your site, API, and other important sources.
8. Check up with your APIs
Especially if you’ve had your website for a while now, you may already have a bunch of API integrations that are connected to other web platforms. If you’ve allowed that API integration to connect and share data within your site, APIs may be an area of vulnerability.
Furthermore, you can conduct an audit of every plugin, API, and many other integrations. Nevertheless, consider the following options:
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Do you use all of them?
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Are you using some of the latest versions? If not, consider updating them.
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Are you using quality products? If you don’t have the proper security protective measures, consider making a replacement
9. Tagging alteration
Spam in your inbox can sometimes mean that bots are connected to a tag that allows it. But, most of the time, the biggest issue is in the website’s about page or maybe in the contact form.
Whatever you do, ensure that you hide your contact form will hide email addresses because if you fail to do so, the bot will easily find the right email for scanning compared to using an external script which is much harder for the
Above all, if your page lists your e-mail address in a format that can easily be identified by a lousy bot (spam bot), it’s best to change your email for an extra layer of security.
10. Protect every access point possible
Whenever you are going up against bad bots, it’s important to protect yourself from being exposed to mobile apps and APIs. Additionally, you can consider sharing blocking information between systems wherever possible.
11. Avoid using older browser variants
This is not any old advice, but an alternative way of not allowing bots to access your site is by blocking older versions of your browsers from accessing your site. You can ask users to use newer versions of your browsers to view your site.
This method prevents bad bots from entering your site and forces all users to update to newer versions in their browsers. Of course, when updating to a more recent browser version, you start to update the .htaccess file of your site, but you can’t do this on your own if you lack technical knowledge; it’s best to hire a web developer for these purposes.
12. Inactive bot user elimination
The same comments should be overlooked regularly in the same way a list of email subscribers and inactive users should be continuously checked and remove anything that doesn’t suit the user’s needs. Bots users that got a chance to break the sign-up authentication security level are not difficult to remove or identify. However, it’s also important to delete accounts that haven’t been active for a certain time.
Nevertheless, inactive accounts may sometimes be bots or are more prone to being taken over by bad bots in the future. Overall, bad bots don’t always create new accounts but stay unnoticed; they try to take over older ones.
13. Pay attention to failed login attempts
It’s not a surprise to see failed log-in attempts, but when they become common, and you see a spike in them, you’re automatically notified of this occurrence. You must continuously check regularly because seasonal checks won’t do the job!
14. Ongoing monitoring
Bot blocking isn’t done in a one-time situation, and you’ll never have to worry about it again. Rather, this wants you to monitor what is going on with your site continuously and if you are experiencing any issues.
Read through each of the issues you may be undergoing and try setting up a schedule of when you will perform regular checks. Maybe it might be monthly, quarterly, or even yearly. Nevertheless, you can keep an eye out for data breaches and even if you hear any online attack trending, consider looking on your site for any potential bot activities.
Wrapping everything up
That’s about it for everything. These are the 14 recommendations we have for you to prevent bad bots. Bad bots can not only destroy your business but also provide a great amount of damage to your reputation. If one user’s account gets hijacked, it might lead to many other attacks and even cause users to run away from your services.
Therefore, it’s always important to stay up to date and try your best to monitor any potential threats on your site continuously.
At Codedesign, as HubSpot partners and Dripify partners, we have implemented several bots to help clients increase engagement and decrease the cost per acquisition. Ask us more at https://codedesign.org/contact-codedesign/.
About CodeDesign
Codedesign is a digital marketing agency specializing in e-commerce and B2B online marketing. Our digital team utilizes the latest digital marketing tools and strategies to help clients reach their business goals. We offer comprehensive services such as website design, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, performance marketing, social media marketing, CRM and marketing automation, email marketing, and more. Our experts create and implement customized digital marketing campaigns to increase website traffic, generate leads, and drive sales. Our expertise in e-commerce and B2B marketing allows us to understand the nuances of the digital marketplace and create effective marketing solutions tailored to their client's needs.
CodeDesign is leading:
- Digital Agency
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Feel free to contact us to see the unprecedented growth of your business.
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