Bot traffic is growing.
In 2025, nearly half of all web traffic comes from bots. While some bots are helpful, many bots are harmful, as they scrape data, abuse logins and inflate operational costs.
Bots can hack image puzzles.
Image recognition puzzles are increasingly ineffective as attackers use botnets and advanced techniques to automate logins and exploit web applications.
Bot protection requires a modern CAPTCHA.
A modern CAPTCHA uses proof-of-work (PoW) technology and invisible computational challenges. This approach keeps websites secure while offering a seamless user experience – with no clicks, image puzzles, or cookies required.
Best bot protection service.
Friendly Captcha delivers powerful, cookie-free bot protection through invisible, privacy-first challenges. Its hybrid system combines cryptographic PoW verification with a global risk database to efficiently stop malicious automation without collecting personal data. Try out now ›
Bot protection now stands at the forefront of modern cybersecurity strategy. In 2023, 49 % of worldwide web traffic was generated by bots – nearly half of all internet traffic.
While many bots support critical tasks like search indexing or monitoring uptime, malicious bots are on the rise. From credential stuffing and account takeover attempts to scraping and denial-of-service attacks, bad bots now threaten the availability, security, and performance of digital applications.
Stop Bad Bots With Modern CAPTCHAs
Modern CAPTCHAs serve as a critical line of defense. By introducing challenges that distinguish human users from automated scripts, CAPTCHAs help mitigate malicious bot activity without disrupting legitimate access.
For enterprises, deploying a next-gen CAPTCHA solution like Friendly Captcha is essential to maintain website functionality, protect user data, and ensure secure, inclusive digital interactions and web traffic. Bot protection involves distinguishing between helpful and harmful bots to prevent exploitation.
What is Anti-Bot Protection and Bot Management?
Enterprises use bot management to identify and allow good bots while blocking bad ones. It involves understanding how bots affect the business, analyzing their intent, and responding to bot activity appropriately.
Bot protection proactively defends websites and applications from automated threats by detecting, filtering, and blocking unwanted bot traffic without compromising legitimate user experience.
What Are Bots?
A bot is an autonomous software designed to perform repetitive tasks without direct human oversight. Single bots operating at high frequency are trivial to flag, yet adversaries rarely rely on single sources.
Instead, they deploy distributed botnets, dispersing requests across diverse IP ranges, devices, and jurisdictions to bypass traditional defences.
Good Bots vs. Bad Bots
Not all automation is harmful. Automated bots can be used for both legitimate and malicious purposes, making it essential to distinguish between good and bad bot traffic.
Search engine crawlers, chatbots, and accessibility tools are examples of good bots that improve usability and the user experience. Conversely, bad bots steal content, flood APIs, and commit large-scale fraud like malware distribution and DDoS attacks.
There is also a gray zone where real humans appear anomalous, such as users behind virtual private networks, privacy-enhancing browsers, or assistive technologies. Therefore, effective bot management must balance blocking bad bots without frustrating privacy-conscious users or those relying on assistive technologies.
Modern bot protection and bot management solutions like Friendly Captcha combine cryptographic puzzles with a global risk data base.
Friendly Captcha’s Bot Protection Stops Bad Bots
Automated attacks require automated defense strategies. The EU-based privacy-first CAPTCHA alternative offers a two-layered security that blocks malicious bot traffic and malicious activities. At the same time, Friendly Captcha doesn’t lock out humans. This makes Friendly Captcha the most accessible CAPTCHA solution you can find.
How It Works
Friendly Captcha is the only sophisticated proof of work based CAPTCHA solution on the market. Friendly Captcha uses a combination of advanced cryptography and advanced risk signals evaluation with full privacy protection.
Each user gets a unique cryptographic puzzle which is solved by the user’s browser in the background. The invisible challenge system does not rely on tracking or HTTP cookies.
| Threats | Description | Friendly Captcha Response |
|---|---|---|
|
Account takeovers with stolen username-password pairs |
Proof-of-work slows velocity; global risk data base flags abnormal login bursts |
|
|
Brute Force Bots |
Systematic password guessing via repeated login attempts |
Puzzle-based proof-of-work enforces per-request cost; abnormal request patterns are rate-limited or blocked |
|
Fake Users |
Mass sign-ups for spam or coupon abuse |
Dynamic risk scaling per registration thwarts high-volume automation |
|
Spam Bots |
Automated form submissions and comment flooding |
Invisible CAPTCHA challenges make spam unprofitable |
|
DDoS Bots |
Flood of requests and messages to exhaust systems |
Client-side computation imposes nonlinear cost on attackers |
|
Rapid password-rotation attacks against authentication endpoints |
Detection of failed-login cascades; dynamic puzzle difficulty escalates |
Organizations and enterprises that care for security and customer experience use Friendly Captcha to manage good and bad bots in real time, based on a global risk database. The dashboard offers comprehensive analytics and logs to track all bot activity.
Benefits of Friendly Captcha Bot Management
Stop bad bot attacks: Friendly Captcha bot protection prevents account takeovers, DDoS attacks, or brute force attacks as well as other malicious bot activity.
Robust security: Friendly Captcha bot management features robust security, which includes invisible proof-of-work challenges and data reconciliation based on a global risk database.
Prevention with CAPTCHAs: Friendly Captcha uses innovative bot detection methods and technology without bothering real users. Total CAPTCHA accessibility for those with specific need included!
Easy set-up: Friendly Captcha bot management can be installed in just three steps and under ten minutes. Find pre-built integrations for the fastest set-up.
Friendly Captcha analyzes user behavior and detects anomalies in internet traffic. It does not categorize users as strictly black or white, bot or not.
Start your free 30 day trial and find the perfect bot protection plan that fits your needs. Sign up now!
FAQ
Bot protection involves using tools and techniques to detect, block, or manage automated traffic and bot attacks on websites and applications. The goal is to prevent malicious bots from launching attacks such as credential stuffing, content scraping, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and fake account creation, while still allowing access to legitimate users and beneficial bots, such as search engine crawlers.
Friendly Captcha takes a privacy-first approach to bot protection, using invisible proof-of-work challenges that run in the background. This approach provides strong security without disrupting the user experience.
Bot mitigation involves the real-time detection and blocking of malicious automated traffic. Bot management is a broader strategy that includes identifying bot intent, allowing good bots, monitoring bot behavior, and optimizing user access policies.
Friendly Captcha supports both bot mitigation and bot management with a two-layered defense: lightweight cryptographic puzzles for real-time protection and a global risk database for long-term traffic insights.
Several bot protection methods are commonly used to detect and stop bad bots traffic:
Rate Limiting: Controls how often users (or bots) can access a resource.
Fingerprinting: Identifies bots based on browser and device characteristics.
Honeypots: Hidden form fields or traps that bots typically interact with but humans ignore.
Image Recognition CAPTCHAs: Require users to click images or identify objects. It is often inaccessible or frustrating for real users.
Friendly Captcha replaces traditional visual CAPTCHAs with an invisible, proof-of-work-based challenge that is both accessible and effective against modern bots.
A botnet is a network of internet-connected devices infected with malware and controlled by a central attacker. Botnets are often used to carry out large-scale automated attacks such as DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service), brute-force login attempts, or mass scraping operations.
Friendly Captcha helps defend against botnet-driven attacks by requiring each device to complete a lightweight cryptographic puzzle before gaining access. This makes large-scale automation impractical and expensive for attackers.
Friendly Captcha is trusted as the best bot protection solution by privacy-conscious organizations worldwide. It offers an invisible, frictionless CAPTCHA alternative that complies with GDPR, WCAG, and other global standards while stopping sophisticated bots in real time.
While many leading security platforms offer bot protection, Friendly Captcha stands out as a trusted provider for businesses that prioritize security and privacy. Unlike traditional CAPTCHA services such as Google reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha or Cloudflare Captcha, Friendly Captcha avoids tracking, doesn’t rely on cookies, and ensures full accessibility with no user friction.
Anti-bot protection is a subset of cybersecurity focused on preventing malicious bots from exploiting websites or APIs. This includes technologies that detect, block, and analyze bot activity in real time.
Friendly Captcha offers advanced anti-bot protection through its unique combination of cryptographic proof-of-work and behavioral risk analysis. The next-gen CAPTCHA is designed to defend against automated threats without burdening real users.
“Bot” is short for “robot”—a software application that runs automated tasks over the internet. Bots can perform both beneficial functions (like indexing search engines or monitoring uptime) and malicious actions (like credential stuffing, DDoS attacks, or scraping content).
Friendly Captcha helps distinguish between good bots and bad bot traffic, ensuring your site remains secure, accessible, and high-performing.
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