專業機器人管理

The Growing Threat of AI-Powered Web Crawlers As AI advances, so do the tools used to fuel it. A growing concern among content creators and site owners is the rise of AI-powered web crawlers—stealthy bots that scrape online content at scale to train large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s Llama. Unlike traditional crawlers that follow industry protocols, these bots often ignore robots.txt, mask their identities, and operate with little regard for server load or ethical boundaries. An example of this growing trend began surfacing in early 2024 but was publicly revealed in April 2025 when Wikipedia reported a sharp increase in bandwidth usage due to aggressive AI-powered web crawlers. According to the Wikimedia Foundation, traffic from these bots, which scrape content to train large language models, had driven a 50% surge in bandwidth consumption since January 2024. These bots often ignored standard crawling rules like robots.txt, resulting in heavier server strain, slower page performance, and rising infrastructure costs. In response, Wikipedia began implementing rate limiting and IP blocking to control the flood of unauthorized scraping. The incident not only impacted user experience but also underscored growing concerns about data ownership, compliance, and the need for more intelligent bot mitigation strategies. Training AI models requires massive datasets, and this has led to unprecedented levels of large-scale web scraping. Unlike older scrapers that might extract specific data points, AI-backed bots tend to crawl full web pages, PDFs, and even media files—all in bulk—to feed their training pipelines. The result? A dramatic increase in server load and bandwidth consumption, pushing cloud hosting and CDN bills sky-high for many website operators. These bots are also more technically evasive, often circumventing rate limits and bot detection systems by mimicking human behavior, rotating through residential IP proxies, and even solving CAPTCHA challenges. The scraping isn’t just aggressive—it’s sophisticated, and that makes traditional defenses nearly obsolete. There’s also a growing legal and ethical dimension. As AI companies harvest content without compensation or consent, content creators are pushing back. Platforms like Reddit, Twitter (X), and leading media publishers have begun actively blocking AI crawlers or charging for API access, signaling a shift toward data ownership and monetization. Many site administrators are now enforcing stricter access policies and implementing more advanced anti-bot measures to protect digital assets. Why Traditional Defenses Fall Short? With AI continuing to develop as a potential cyberthreat, the line between human and bot traffic is increasingly blurred. Legacy defenses, built to stop obvious, rule-breaking bots, now struggle against stealthy, cloud-based crawlers that mimic human behavior using headless browsers, rotating IPs, and real-time adaptation. These bots are no longer simple scripts—they’re distributed, intelligent, and designed to evade detection. Traditional security tools focused on signatures and static rules often lack the nuance to analyze behavior, intent, and context over time. To keep up, organizations need intelligent, behavior-driven defenses that detect anomalies, correlate patterns, and respond dynamically. IntelliFend: A Modern Solution to AI Scraping IntelliFend delivers a game-changing approach to bot management, purpose-built to identify and contain AI crawlers. Its multi-layered detection and mitigation system combines advanced fingerprinting, behavioral analytics and adaptive policy enforcement, enabling real-time identification and defense against unauthorized bot activity. The platform detects bots based on how they behave, not just how they identify themselves. For example, AI scrapers often show erratic page traversal patterns, rapid-fire API requests, and usage of cloud-based infrastructure with shared fingerprints. IntelliFend can recognize these markers in real time and stop unauthorized access before they cause damage. Advanced Fingerprinting Detects subtle technical markers like headless browser behavior, IP subnet patterns, and device configs. Tracks AI bots even when they change disguises. Behavioral Analytics Identifies suspicious crawling patterns—like erratic page hopping, unnatural timing, and API flooding. Differentiates legitimate bots (e.g., search engines) from stealth AI scrapers. JavaScript Challenges Detects suspicious signals—like invalid event chains, bot-like mouse movement curves and acceleration Sniffing abnormal environments (e.g., containerize runtime, virtual machine, etc.) Detects inconsistent hardware specs (e.g. CPU, memory, etc) Cross-layer Blocking Blocks unauthorized AI crawlers before they impact performance, without penalizing verified bots. Maintains SEO health by whitelisting major search engine IPs and user agents. Adaptive Policies Allow admin fine-tune policies: Allow Googlebot, challenge suspicious crawlers, and block high-risk AI bots. Customizable per use case, industry, or security posture. 多層次防護設計 進階指紋辨識：辨識 headless 瀏覽器、可疑 IP 網段與硬體配置異常行為。 行為分析引擎：分析頁面跳轉異常、滑鼠動作曲線異常、非人類操作邏輯等行為。 JavaScript 偵測挑戰：對模擬操作進行反制，如追蹤虛擬環境、容器執行痕跡與硬體參數不一致等線索。 跨層阻擋策略：針對未授權的 AI 爬蟲優先阻擋，同時不影響合法爬蟲（如 Googlebot），兼顧 SEO 可見度。 彈性政策配置：依據產業類型、網站性質與風險等級，客製調整允許、挑戰或封鎖條件。 Unlike traditional WAFs, IntelliFend continuously updates its algorithms to track new threats, all while preserving search engine visibility by whitelisting verified crawlers. Site administrators can customize policies that suit their traffic profiles, thereby allowing legitimate bots like Googlebot while blocking AI crawlers that disregard crawl rules. Furthermore, IntelliFend makes it easy to manage bot access across multiple environments. Its intuitive dashboard allows real-time monitoring and policy enforcement across different domains or content types. Combined with comprehensive analytics and integration with cloud infrastructure, the platform gives both technical and business teams the tools they need to defend their digital assets without sacrificing performance or discoverability. What Sets IntelliFend Apart? Real-time mitigation: Prevents content theft and server strain as it happens. Granular control: Enforce restrictions by environment, traffic type, or region. AI-optimized defense: Tailored to detect next-gen bots using machine learning and threat intelligence. Intelligence-led evolution: Tracks bot trends, adjusts rulesets, and stays ahead of emerging scraping tools. As the industry moves toward more responsible AI development, many expect a shift from aggressive web crawling to licensed data access and structured APIs. But until that shift becomes widespread, content owners remain vulnerable. IntelliFend offers the protection needed today, with the flexibility to adapt to tomorrow. To learn more, contact us for a demo.

A Seamless Synergy IntelliFend’s VisitorTag and AccuBot technologies form a comprehensive bot management system designed to detect, analyze, and manage human users, good bots, and bad bots with precision. VisitorTag’s Role in Human User Detection VisitorTag specializes in identifying genuine users through behavioral analysis. . It creates unique, persistent identifiers for each device by leveraging with hardware attributes, browser configurations, and session telemetry, it allows you to track specific devices and correlate their behavior with user-specific signals like user IDs, email addresses and ad campaign IDs. VisitorTag goes beyond traditional device fingerprinting. It combines session-based risk insights with anti-spoofing technology, ensuring precise tracking so you can distinguish between genuine users, bots, and bad actors. By leveraging both stateful and stateless methods to create unique identifiers, VisitorTag allows you to maintain accurate, persistent device tracking without the disruptions such as private browsing, cookie clearing, version updates or other changes often cause with competing solutions. AccuBot’s Role in Comprehensive Bot Management While VisitorTag focuses on human user detection, AccuBot broadens the scope by detecting all types of bot activity. Using a combination of server-side and client-side data, AccuBot assigns risk scores to every session, enabling real-time decisions to allow legitimate users, throttle suspicious traffic, or block malicious bots. How the Technologies Work Together Data Collection: VisitorTag gathers data from multiple layers, including network signals (IP addresses, HTTP headers), browser characteristics (operating systems, plugins), and interaction metrics (mouse movements, scrolling speeds). Real-Time Behavioral Insights: VisitorTag analyzes this data to identify anomalies indicative of bots. Integration with AccuBot: The behavioral insights from VisitorTag are fed into AccuBot’s detection engine, where they are combined with additional bot-related signals. This creates a robust, multi-faceted risk assessment for each session. Decision-Making: Based on the risk score, AccuBot determines the appropriate action—allowing, throttling, or blocking traffic in real time. What Distinguishes IntelliFend’s Solution IntelliFend’s VisitorTag and AccuBot technologies deliver: Accuracy: Combining behavioral insights and machine learning ensures minimal false positives and negatives. Real-Time Action: Edge capabilities process data closer to the user, ensuring low latency. Control: Businesses can customize traffic management policies, choosing which bots to allow and which to block. Real-World Impact In one deployment, IntelliFend used VisitorTag to detect fraudulent account creation attempts on an e-commerce platform. Behavioral anomalies, such as multiple accounts created from the same device,  flagged early, preventing financial losses and preserving the platform’s integrity. Meanwhile, AccuBot identified bot-driven traffic surges, ensuring uninterrupted access for genuine users. Contact Us for a Demo Ready to see how IntelliFend’s VisitorTag Tracking Technology and AccuBot Detection Engine can transform your security strategy? Contact us today to book a demo and experience the future of bot management. Check out our previous blog: Why Human User Detection is Key to Effective Bot Management

By Product Marketing As the cyberthreat landscape grows more complex and cybercriminals take advantage of emerging technologies and new vulnerabilities, enterprises must tread carefully as they confront the challenge of protecting their platforms from evolving bot threats while maintaining smooth access for legitimate users. Real customers drive real revenue These advanced bots can cleverly imitate human behavior to slip past conventional defenses, posing serious challenges for enterprises. They disrupt customer experiences, place a strain on resources, and ultimately have a detrimental effect on revenue. As such, enterprises must ensure that they have the ability to accurately distinguish legitimate users from bots. Whether it’s a customer signing up for a service, making a purchase, or engaging with a platform, ensuring these interactions are frictionless is key to maintaining trust and driving growth. On the other hand, bots generate fraudulent traffic that wastes bandwidth, drains server resources, and skews analytics, diverting attention and investment from real opportunities. Furthermore, bots often flood platforms with non-customer requests, overloading systems and driving up infrastructure costs. If left unchecked, this activity not only erodes performance but also inflates operational expenses. Accurate human user detection allows enterprises to allocate resources efficiently, ensuring they are focused on supporting real customers rather than processing illegitimate traffic. As cybercriminals continue to deploy more sophisticated bot strategies, enterprises need more than basic security measures like CAPTCHAs or IP blocking. What is needed is an intelligent, adaptive approach that adds an extra layer of defense to traditional defenses to reliably identify human users. The Challenge of Distinguishing Human Users Detecting human users is far from straightforward. While many organizations rely on tools such as Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and DDoS protection systems, these technologies are not designed to differentiate humans from bots. WAFs: Primarily protect against OWASP Top 10 threats such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. They focus on known attack vectors but lack the ability to analyze user behavior in real time. DDoS Protection Systems: Designed to identify and mitigate volumetric attacks. These systems may detect high traffic loads from malicious bots but are not equipped to assess the nuances of individual user interactions. These limitations leave organizations vulnerable to advanced bots that can mimic human behavior, bypassing traditional defenses and creating challenges in safeguarding applications, APIs, and resources. Common Bot Detection Techniques There are several mainstream techniques that are used to detect malicious bot actiivty. Human User Accuracy: How effectively the technique distinguishes between human users and bots. User Experience (UX): How seamless and frictionless the technique is for legitimate users. Below, we explore common detection techniques, their pros and cons, and compare them to Visitor Behavior Tracking—an advanced approach designed to adapt to modern bot challenges. Detection Solutions A variety of detection techniques are commonly used to identify human users, each with its strengths and limitations. Basic CAPTCHAs, for instance, require users to solve simple challenges, such as identifying images or entering text. While effective against basic bots, advanced bots equipped with machine learning or human solvers can easily bypass CAPTCHAs, making this method increasingly unreliable. Furthermore, CAPTCHAs often frustrate legitimate users, particularly those on mobile devices or with accessibility needs, leading to poor user experience. Static behavioral analysis is another method that relies on fixed patterns, such as mouse movement speed or click timing, to detect bots. Although minimally disruptive for users, this approach struggles against bots capable of mimicking human-like behaviors, leading to inaccuracies over time. Similarly, User-Agent analysis examines HTTP headers to identify bots, but this technique is easily spoofed by bots, rendering it insufficient as a standalone solution. Cookie-based tracking is slightly more robust, as it monitors user behavior across sessions. However, it is vulnerable to cookie deletion, private browsing, and manipulation by bots, limiting its reliability in modern environments. Reputation-based systems offer another approach, leveraging historical data to classify users or IP addresses as legitimate or malicious. While these systems can be effective for known threats, they often fall short when faced with new or unknown bot profiles. Machine learning is also frequently employed, using predictive algorithms to distinguish bots from humans. However, the accuracy of this method heavily depends on the quality of the training data. Poorly trained models can misclassify users, creating both false positives and false negatives. Blocking Solutions Blocking solutions are often used as a first line of defense against bots, but their simplicity can sometimes lead to unintended consequences. For instance, simple IP blocking aims to prevent access from known malicious IP addresses. However, this approach is easily circumvented by bots using rotating IPs or proxies, and it risks blocking legitimate users who share IP ranges with bad actors. As a result, its effectiveness is limited, especially against sophisticated bot networks. Geolocation checks are another blocking method, designed to restrict traffic from specific geographic regions. While potentially useful for targeting region-specific threats, this technique has significant drawbacks. Bots often use VPNs or proxies to mask their true location, rendering geolocation checks ineffective. Moreover, these checks can inadvertently exclude legitimate users from the targeted regions, leading to poor user experience and reduced accessibility. Rate Limiting Solutions Rate limiting is a commonly implemented solution to control traffic volumes by restricting the number of requests a single IP or session can make within a specific timeframe. While this technique can reduce the overall activity of bots, it often sacrifices user experience in the process. Legitimate users generating high levels of traffic—such as those navigating quickly through an application or conducting large transactions—may find themselves inadvertently blocked. This blunt approach lacks the nuance needed to address the sophisticated behavior of modern bots while ensuring seamless access for genuine users. Comparisons of Detection, Blocking, Behavioral and Rate Limiting Solutions and their Accuracy and UX in Bot Management Group Technique Human User Detection Accuracy User Experience Detection Solutions Basic CAPTCHA Low Poor Static Behavioral Analysis Low to Moderate Moderate User-Agent Analysis Low Excellent Cookie-Based Tracking Moderate Good Reputation-Based Systems Moderate Good Over-Reliance on Machine Learning Varies (Ben: can rate it as good?) Moderate

With the convenience of online ticketing comes a new set of challenges, particularly in the world of high-demand events. Ticket scalping has evolved, fueled by advanced bots that snapping up tickets the moment they go on sale, leaving genuine fans with few options and very often frustrated. Recent incidents, such as struggles for Coldplay tickets in Hong Kong and India, and Jay Chou concert tickets in Taiwan, as well as the 2023 Taylor Swift ticket fiasco in the U.S., reveal how bot-driven scalping is reshaping the market. As bots become more sophisticated, businesses must adopt advanced tools to ensure fair access. How Scalping Has Transformed Ticket scalping isn’t new, but with AI, bot has elevated it to unprecedented levels. Bots, or ticket scalpers, now use automated processes to claim hundreds or thousands of tickets within seconds, reselling them at inflated prices that often leave regular fans out in the cold. Scalpers use a variety of tactics to gain an advantage in ticket purchasing. By creating numerous profiles—sometimes with fake or stolen identities—they can bypass ticket limits intended to prevent bulk buying. Programmed to act the instant tickets go on sale, bots rapidly fill out forms and complete checkout faster than any human, securing tickets in seconds. In addition, scalpers exploit presale periods by purchasing memberships or credentials meant for loyal fans, allowing them early access to tickets before they’re available to the general public. Many scalpers also engage in speculative buying, acquiring tickets for events they expect to become highly popular and then reselling them at significant mark-ups when demand peaks. Ticket sales platforms can protect against bots that quickly grab tickets by employing bot management strategies like rate limiting, IP blocklisting and throttling, as a last resort, CAPTCHA challenges. However, these methods often compromise user experience as a trade-off. Why WAF Alone Falls Short in Identifying Legit Users in Ticketing While traditional web application security is vital for general website security, they lack the specialized capabilities needed to combat advanced bot-driven ticket scalping. Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), for example, are primarily designed to block common cyber threats such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, but they fall short when faced with the complex, high-speed tactics that scalping bots employ. Today’s scalpers use sophisticated bots capable of mimicking human behavior to bypass WAF protections. These bots can create multiple fake profiles, rotate IP addresses and use advanced automation to fill out forms and complete purchases faster than any human. This level of complexity goes beyond what standard WAFs are designed to manage, allowing scalpers to secure tickets at high-demand events within seconds while genuine customers miss out. Besides, with many ticketing platforms hosting applications in cloud environments, the demand for scalability and quick adaptation is crucial. Basic cybersecurity solutions often struggle to scale efficiently in these environments, leaving ticketing platforms vulnerable during high-traffic events. This is where IntelliFend comes in. And Why IntelliFend Is Essential to Bridge the Gap? IntelliFend is a cost effective bot management solution designed to safeguard your websites, applications, and APIs from unwanted bot traffic. It bridges the security gaps left by WAFs, offering advanced protection against bot activities. Leveraging multi-layered AI and machine learning, IntelliFend accurately detects and classifies traffic, distinguishing between legitimate users, good bots, and scalpers. Whether you’re running a ticket sales platform or an online store, IntelliFend seamlessly integrates with your AWS infrastructure to provide robust security without compromising performance. Human Detection: Precision and Seamless Protection IntelliFend excels in human detection through its advanced AccuBot Detection Engine, which combines multi-layered analysis of client-side and server-side signals with AI and machine learning to accurately classify traffic as human, automated, or good bots. Enhanced by VisitorTag tracking technology, IntelliFend uses detailed data such as FingerprintID, cookies, and behavioral patterns to ensure precise identification. This sophisticated approach minimizes false positives, avoids disruptive CAPTCHAs, and delivers seamless protection, making it ideal for high-demand ticketing platforms. Get Started Today IntelliFend is designed to seamlessly complement any existing CDN or WAF, providing advanced bot protection that goes beyond the limitations of traditional cybersecurity tools. Whether you’re running an online store, managing a ticketing platform, or securing high-demand services, IntelliFend’s AI-driven solution ensures robust, scalable defense against unwanted bot activity—without compromising user experience. For AWS users, IntelliFend integrates effortlessly with your cloud environment, offering flexible deployment options to fit your infrastructure needs. Protect your platform while maintaining peak performance with IntelliFend’s seamless AWS integration. Ready to take the next step? Contact us at [email protected] to see how IntelliFend can secure your platform today.

A common misconception is that WAFs alone are sufficient to combat the diverse and sophisticated threats posed by bots. In this blog, we will explore why relying solely on WAFs is inadequate for managing bot attacks and how a dedicated bot management solution can provide the necessary insights and controls.