How Can Price Scraping be Prevented?

IP blocking and in-house manual bot detection techniques may work for a while, but usually end up being a futile exercise as scrapers change their tactics. Stopping bots requires a dedicated in-house team keeping vigil around the clock. This is easier said than done ─ the team should be equipped to detect bot patterns, behaviors, bot sources and devices, and then make an informed decision to block scraper bots. The challenge here is that it is very difficult to ensure minimal false positives and ensure that real users are never blocked. When scrapers realize that their bots are being blocked, they devise newer, more sophisticated methods to bypass in-house blocking mechanisms, making it a never-ending cat and mouse game that simply will not work as bots get more sophisticated.

While WAFs are well suited to protect your website from SQL injection, DDoS attacks, cross-site scripting (XSS) and other Web application vulnerabilities, they are not equipped to stop advanced human-like bots that can change IP addresses, devices, and attack methods.