hupe13

There are many ways to block unwanted access to your website. This plugin checks which user agent is accessing your website. If it is outdated, unwanted, or suspicious, access is blocked.
Every time your web browser makes a request to a website, it sends a HTTP Header called the “User Agent”. The User Agent string contains information about your web browser name, operating system, device type and lots of other useful bits of information.
The plugin sends with an API the User Agent string of every browser that accesses your website for the first time to <a href="https://api.whatismybrowser.com/api/v2/user_agent_parse" rel="nofollow ugc">https://api.whatismybrowser.com/api/v2/user_agent_parse</a> to obtain following information about the User Agent:
<ul>
<li>Software Name & Version</li>
<li>Operating System Name & Version</li>
</ul>
With this information, the plugin attempts to detect old and bad browsers and denies them access to your website.
<h4>HowTo</h4>
<ul>
<li>Go to <a href="https://developers.whatismybrowser.com/api/pricing/" rel="nofollow ugc">What is my browser?</a> and sign up to the WhatIsMyBrowser.com API for a Basic (free) Application Plan.</li>
<li>Take care about the <a href="https://developers.whatismybrowser.com/api/about/legal/" rel="nofollow ugc">WhatIsMyBrowser.com API Terms and Conditions</a>.</li>
<li>You have a limit of 5000 hits / month for Parsing User Agent. That’s why the plugin manages a database table.</li>
<li>The user agent string of every browser that accesses your website for the first time is sent to this service, and the information is stored this table.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Functions</h4>
<ul>
<li>The plugin checks whether the browser is up to date; it does not check whether the requested page or post actually exists.</li>
<li>Browsers are blocked if the browser and/or system are outdated:
<ul>
<li>Default: Chrome, Edge and Chrome based browsers < 139, Firefox browsers < 140, Safari < 18, Samsung Browser < 28, Internet Explorer, Netscape (!)</li>
<li>Old systems are all Windows versions prior to Windows 10, MacOS prior to Catalina and Android versions < 10 and Symbian.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>It will be blocked also if “Software” contains “unknown” or is empty.</li>
<li>You can also set up other browsers.</li>
<li>Sometimes there are false positive, for example, if the browser is from Mastodon. In this case, you can exclude it from the check.</li>
<li>The plugin checks whether the crawlers really originate from Google, Bing, Yandex, Apple, Mojeek, Baidu, Seznam and others.</li>
<li>The plugin blocks browsers like Chrome, Firefox and other without <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Fetch_metadata_request_header" rel="nofollow ugc">Sec-Fetch headers</a> (Sec-Fetch-Site, Sec-Fetch-Mode, Sec-Fetch-Dest) and incorrect <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Guides/Client_hints" rel="nofollow ugc">Client hints</a> (Sec-CH-UA, Sec-CH-UA-Platform).</li>
</ul>
<h4>About robots.txt</h4>
<ul>
<li>You can configure some rewrite rules to provide a robots.txt file that can allow or deny crawling for a browser. If crawling is denied, access to your website will be blocked for that browser.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Logging</h4>
<ul>
<li>The logging can be very detailed. Please check the logs and the WIMB table regularly.</li>
</ul>

Block old browser versions and suspicious browsers

With the help of WhatIsMyBrowser the plugin detects old and bad browsers and denies them access. A special robots.txt denies crawling by bad bots.

Jeff Starr

<blockquote>
✨ Trap bad bots in a virtual black hole
</blockquote>
Important: Do NOT use this plugin on sites with caching. <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/topic/important-do-not-use-on-sites-with-caching/" rel="ugc">Learn more »</a>
👾 Bye bye bad bots..
Bad bots are the worst. They do all sorts of nasty stuff and waste server resources. The Blackhole plugin helps to stop bad bots and save precious resources for legit visitors.
👾 How does it work?
First the plugin adds a hidden trigger link to the footer of your pages. You then add a line to your robots.txt file that forbids all bots from following the hidden link. Bots that then ignore or disobey your robots rules will crawl the link and fall into the trap. Once trapped, bad bots are denied further access to your WordPress site.
I call it the “one-strike” rule: bots have one chance to obey your site’s robots.txt rule. Failure to comply results in immediate banishment. The best part is that the Blackhole only affects bad bots: human users never see the hidden link, and good bots obey the robots rules in the first place. Win-win! 🙂
<blockquote>
✨ Add a blackhole trap to help stop bad bots
</blockquote>
Important: Do NOT use this plugin on sites with caching. <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/topic/important-do-not-use-on-sites-with-caching/" rel="ugc">Learn more »</a>
👾 Features
<ul>
<li>Easy to set up</li>
<li>Squeaky clean code</li>
<li>Focused and modular</li>
<li>Lightweight, fast and flexible</li>
<li>Built with the WordPress API</li>
<li>Works with other security plugins</li>
<li>Easy to reset the list of bad bots</li>
<li>Easy to delete any bot from the list</li>
<li>Regularly updated and “future proof”</li>
<li>Blackhole link includes “nofollow” attribute</li>
<li>Plugin options configurable via settings screen</li>
<li>Works silently behind the scenes to protect your site</li>
<li>Whitelists all major search engines to never block</li>
<li>Focused on flexibility, performance, and security</li>
<li>Email alerts with WHOIS lookup for blocked bots</li>
<li>Complete inline documentation via the Help tab</li>
<li>Provides setting to whitelist any IP addresses</li>
<li>Customize the message displayed to bad bots 😉</li>
<li>One-click restore the plugin default options</li>
<li>Does NOT use or require any .htaccess rules</li>
</ul>
Blackhole for Bad Bots protects your site against bad bots, spammers, scrapers, scanners, and other automated threats.
<blockquote>
✨ Not using WordPress? Check out the <a href="https://perishablepress.com/blackhole-bad-bots/" rel="nofollow ugc">standalone PHP version of Blackhole</a>!
</blockquote>
👾 Whitelist
By default, this plugin does NOT block any of the major search engines (user agents):
<ul>
<li>AOL.com</li>
<li>Baidu</li>
<li>Bingbot/MSN</li>
<li>DuckDuckGo</li>
<li>Googlebot</li>
<li>Teoma</li>
<li>Yahoo!</li>
<li>Yandex</li>
</ul>
These search engines (and all of their myriad variations) are whitelisted via user agent. So are a bunch of other “useful” bots. They always are allowed full access to your site, even if they disobey your robots.txt rules. This list can be customized in the plugin settings. For a complete list of whitelisted bots, visit the Help tab in the plugin settings (under “Whitelist Settings”).
<blockquote>
✨ Check out <a href="https://plugin-planet.com/blackhole-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Blackhole Pro</a> and level up with advanced features!
</blockquote>
👾 Exclusive Pro Features
<ul>
<li>Option to disable for logged-in users</li>
<li>Threshold control (number of allowed hits)</li>
<li>Custom email alerts</li>
<li>Custom messages for blocked bots</li>
<li>Custom redirect for blocked bots</li>
<li>Custom blackhole trigger links</li>
<li>Complete inline documentation</li>
<li>Block bots based on user agent</li>
<li>Block bots based on IP address</li>
<li>Whitelist/allow bots by user agent</li>
<li>Whitelist/allow bots by IP address</li>
<li>Redirect whitelisted bots</li>
<li>Set custom HTTP Status Code</li>
<li>Full-featured Bad Bot Log with paging, sorting, and field search</li>
<li>Manually add bad bots to the Bad Bot Log</li>
<li>Geo/IP location lookups for each bad bot</li>
<li>Logs number of blocked hits for each bot</li>
</ul>
..plus everything the free version can do and more.
<blockquote>
✨ Learn more and <a href="https://plugin-planet.com/blackhole-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">get Blackhole Pro »</a>
</blockquote>
👾 Privacy
User Data: This plugin automatically blocks bad bots. When bad bots fall into the trap, their IP address, user agent, and other request data are stored in the WP database. No other user data is collected by this plugin. At any time, the administrator may delete all saved data via the plugin settings.
Services: This plugin does not connect to any third-party locations or services.
Cookies: This plugin does not set any cookies.
Credit: Header Image Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Blackhole for Bad Bots is developed and maintained by <a href="https://x.com/perishable" rel="nofollow ugc">Jeff Starr</a>, 15-year <a href="https://plugin-planet.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress developer</a> and <a href="https://books.perishablepress.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">book author</a>.
👾 Support development
I develop and maintain this free plugin with love for the WordPress community. To show support, you can <a href="https://monzillamedia.com/donate.html" rel="nofollow ugc">make a donation</a> or purchase one of my books:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wp-tao.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">The Tao of WordPress</a></li>
<li><a href="https://digwp.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Digging into WordPress</a></li>
<li><a href="https://htaccessbook.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">.htaccess made easy</a></li>
<li><a href="https://wp-tao.com/wordpress-themes-book/" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress Themes In Depth</a></li>
<li><a href="https://books.perishablepress.com/downloads/wizards-collection-sql-recipes-wordpress/" rel="nofollow ugc">Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress</a></li>
</ul>
And/or purchase one of my premium WordPress plugins:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/bbq-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">BBQ Pro</a> – Blazing fast WordPress firewall</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/blackhole-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Blackhole Pro</a> – Automatically block bad bots</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/banhammer-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Banhammer Pro</a> – Monitor traffic and ban the bad guys</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/ga-google-analytics-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">GA Google Analytics Pro</a> – Connect WordPress to Google Analytics</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/head-meta-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Head Meta Pro</a> – Ultimate Meta Tags for WordPress</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/simple-ajax-chat-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Simple Ajax Chat Pro</a> – Unlimited chat rooms</li>
<li><a href="https://plugin-planet.com/usp-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">USP Pro</a> – Unlimited front-end forms</li>
</ul>
Links, tweets and likes also appreciated. Thank you! 🙂

Blackhole for Bad Bots

Отличный инструмент

Simple. I install this every time I spin up a new WordPress site.

Simple

Blackhole is a WordPress security plugin that detects and traps bad bots in a virtual black hole, where they are denied access to your entire site.

Block old browser versions and suspicious browsers vs Blackhole for Bad Bots