Filtering bot actions

The Altcraft platform can detect bot activity and modified proxy settings and is able to filter out these events. Thanks to this, clients do not receive distorted data about user activity on their sites. This mechanism allows you to get accurate information from analytics and reports on the platform.

The platform checks each connection and compares its pattern or subnet with those in the directory. Settings for filtering bot actions are contained in two config files: "bots_ua.json " and "bots_ip.json ". Currently, 1139 network rules and 575 UserAgent rules have been added to these directories.

Validation can be performed on the following events:

Event	Description
import_form	Import from a form with a web layer
import_popup	Import from pop-up
open	Opening a message
click	Clicks and confirms for all channels and redirect to the subscription manager
click_sms	Clicks on the SMS handler
read	Checking the read pixel in an email
unsub	Unsubscription of channels
click_push	Clicks on the push handler
pixel_open	Registration of target and redirection through pixel

The following actions are available for the identified bot/proxy connection:

Action	Description
event_ignore	These events are completely ignored. Used to ignore events that were not committed by the user, but the target action (for example, antivirus protection system operation) should be processed.
ua_ignore	Ignores UserAgent events and all associated data. Applies when a user performs an action, but because there was a data corruption (e.g., using a VPN), the user data should be ignored.
ip_ignore	Ignores the IP address of the event and all associated data, including geo_ip. Applies when a user performs an action, but because there has been data corruption (e.g., VPN usage), the event data should be ignored.
block	The request is blocked, opening an error page. Used when you want to protect against malicious traffic (e.g., botnets or crawlers).
log	Regardless of other actions, additionally records all details of the event in the info level of the logging (Bot detector action)
none	Used if you want to temporarily disable actions for a particular rule

caution

If you need to change the configuration, create a copy of the config file and name it "custom.bots_ua.json " or "custom.bots_ip.json ", depending on the config. Do not make any changes to the original files!

Structure of bots_ua.json

    {
        "pattern": "MTRobot",  // Pattern
        "events": ["click", "open"],  // List of events to check ([] - all supported events)
        "actions": [ // List of actions to take (default [] - ua_ignore and ip_ignore)
            "ua_ignore",
            "ip_ignore"
        ],

        // Information fields (optional)
        "added": "2023-09-08",
        "url": "https://metrics-tools.de/robot.html",
        "instances": [
            "MTRobot/0.2 (Metrics Tools Analytics Crawler; https://metrics-tools.de/robot.html; crawler@metrics-tools.de)"
        ],
        "source": [
            "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/monperrus/crawler-user-agents/master/crawler-user-agents.json"
        ]
    },

Structure of bots_ip.json

    {
        "network": "87.240.128.0/18", // Subnets
        "events": ["click", "open"],  // List of events to check ([] - all supported events)
        "actions": [ // List of actions to take (default [] - ua_ignore and ip_ignore)
            "ua_ignore",
            "ip_ignore"
        ],

        // Information fields (optional)
        "added": "2023-09-08",
        "url": "https://metrics-tools.de/robot.html",
        "instances": [
            "MTRobot/0.2 (Metrics Tools Analytics Crawler; https://metrics-tools.de/robot.html; crawler@metrics-tools.de)"
        ],
        "source": [
            "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/monperrus/crawler-user-agents/master/crawler-user-agents.json"
        ]
    },

tip

If you want to temporarily disable a rule, you should specify "none" in the "actions " parameter. If you specify an empty set, the default actions ua_ignore and ip_ignore will be executed.