Anti-Bot Systems

When you scrape a site, you talk directly to its server.

Servers try to answer: “Is this a human or a bot?”

This is why anti-bot systems exist.

Why sites block bots - protect server load - stop data abuse - prevent scraping of private data - avoid spam and attacks

Common bot signals Websites look for: - too many requests per second - missing or fake headers - same pattern again and again - no JavaScript execution - repeated hits from one IP

If detected, they may: - return 403 or 429 - show CAPTCHA - redirect to warning page

What a good scraper should do Not fight, but behave like a human: - send real headers - use delays - follow robots.txt - avoid restricted paths - scrape only what you need

Example: adding headers and delay ```python import time import requests

headers = { "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0" }

res = requests.get("https://example.com", headers=headers) time.sleep(3) ```

Graph: anti-bot decision ```mermaid flowchart LR A[Scraper Request] --> B[Website] B --> C{Human-like?} C -->|Yes| D[Send Page] C -->|No| E[Block / CAPTCHA] ```

Remember - Anti-bot is protection, not challenge - Respect sites and scrape politely - Human-like behavior keeps scrapers alive