How to Block Bad Bots and Spammers in Magento [VIDEO]

If you run an eCommerce store on Magento, then protecting your website from bad bots should be one of the key priorities.

 

According to recent research, 70% of an eCommerce website traffic is compromised by bots. This non-human traffic even goes over 80% during the sale season.
 

What are the risks of bad bots activity for your Magento store?

  • Theft of User Data. Fraudsters use bots for unauthorised purchases with stolen user credentials.
  • Price Scraping. Competitors can extract the product pricing and undercut your pricing strategy.
  • Card Fraud. Hackers run thousands of small purchases using stolen credit cards and then resell these cards at a much higher price.
  • Web Scraping. Your competitors may employ bots to scrape your unique content and refurbish it elsewhere.
  • Form Spam. Form spam is usually accomplished by bots, repeated submission of forms on a Magento website to spam the site with fake leads.
  • Fake Account Creation. Fraudsters use bots to create fake accounts to commit various types of frauds such as content spam, spreading malware, skewing website SEO, etc.

 

 

Now, let’s focus on the last two mentioned above.

 

Spambots, as well as fake users, can cause extensive damage to your web store.  First and foremost, they make it difficult for you to identify your actual users, leading to a long-term impact on your project strategy.

 

The easiest way spammers enter your website is through fake registrations. The identification of the bots is the first step in protection. Finding bad bots can be automated by using different custom solutions – it’s up to you to choose the best solution for your situation.
 

How to identify Magento bots manually?

  1. On the Magento Admin sidebar, go to Customers to check for some unusual stuff (e.g., whether customers from other countries (.ru or .cn) are pushing lousy content to your site, even if they have valid emails).
  2. Similarly, go to Marketing > Reviews on the Admin sidebar to check the unrelated content possibly attacking your website.
  3. Finally, on the Admin sidebar, go to Marketing > Newsletters to check the requests in the newsletter area and check here for suspicious entries.

 

 

These issues are elaborated further in this video ⬇️⬇️⬇️

 

 

 

 

Our Top Choice Free Magento Security Scanners:

  • MageReport by Dutch provider Byte

    Usually, we use MageReport.com. It’s a free tool for quickly checking the security status of your Magento shop(s). It scans your Magento shop for all known vulnerabilities in Magento and even some commonly used in 3rd party extensions.

  • Website Scanner by Astra Security

    You can also scan your Magento store for general security issues, SEO spam, blacklisting, and so on with one another free website scanner – GetAstra.com.

 

 

How to Block Bad Attacks on Your Magento Store?

  • 1. Block bad bots via web server configuration

    All you need to do is analyse your store access logs using a text editor or log analyzer tools and then block the bots’ IP in your web server configuration file. [You can also find popular instructions for htaccess files that should block most popular bots]. You should be careful modifying that file and blocking access to your site. 

  • 2. CAPTCHA

    Using a CAPTCHA is an excellent method to stop bots. reCAPTCHA is a free service Google offers as a replacement for traditional CAPTCHAs.

  • 3. Block bad bots using Magento extension

    There is a range of different extensions on the Magento Marketplace; you can choose any of them. But also keep in mind, some Magento extensions may be hacking your store.

  • 4. Protect your store using software Firewall

    This is one of the most manageable steps to implement. All you need is to sign up for cloud computing services from one of the most popular providers.

    With our clients, we tend to use Cloudflare (both free and paid plans) or Sucuri.

 

You may have a web application firewall or an in-house cybersecurity team for bot mitigation. But these solutions do not fully protect your Magento store against all the mentioned vulnerabilities. 

 

We’ve recently discovered a new alternative Security software solution called Astra.  The main difference of this solution is that it is monitoring your website even from the backend level.

 

 

Top Benefits of Using Astra Service:

  • Rock Solid Firewall
  • Malware Scanner
  • Community Security
  • Security Audit & VAPT
  • Intuitive Dashboard
  • Country Blocking
  • Human Support 24/7

 

To sum up, if you are looking to boost the security of your store by keeping spam users and bots at a distance – check out Astra Security.

 

If you need a hand maintaining and optimising your website, please contact us to start discussing your requirements. For all those who want a free video review of Magento website – don’t hesitate and click the button right now.

 

  • Let’s discuss how MageCloud team can help to secure your Magento 2 store. 
Get Your Free Website Audit

 

 

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