Bot IP addresses are malicious software programs designed to carry out automated online activities that benefit fraudsters. These include creating fake accounts, submitting chargebacks, scraping or crawling websites and other forms of traffic manipulation. Detecting and blocking advanced bots can mitigate fraudulent behavior, protect sensitive data and prevent other damage to websites and the business as a whole.
Unlike legitimate user behavior, bots can be hard to identify. However, a few simple checks can make the difference between good and bad bots.
Bot IP Addresses: Identifying and Blocking Malicious Bots
The first step is to examine the source IP address of incoming web traffic. This can indicate if it’s coming from a data center, VPN or proxy server. It can also be compared against known bot networks to help you block them with confidence.
You can also look for suspicious language patterns. If several different bots are using the same language, this may signal that they are centralizedly programmed. Another indicator is when the traffic comes from areas you do not serve, as this could be a sign of malicious intent.
Other signs of bots include an unexplained increase in bounce rate or an unexplained increase in traffic from one specific location. In some cases, bots are used to fill out form fields for spamming purposes or to falsely generate conversions.
A number of tools can be employed to mitigate bots, including a WAF and a rate-limiting solution. These can reduce the amount of traffic from a particular IP address and help identify malicious ones, but they won’t stop all bots because most bots pursue other objectives than disrupting analytics.