Anubis Deploys Proof-of-Work Barrier Against AI Scraping, Raising Costs for Mass Bots
Updated
Updated · MR Online · Aug 6
Anubis Deploys Proof-of-Work Barrier Against AI Scraping, Raising Costs for Mass Bots
3 articles · Updated · MR Online · Aug 6
Summary
Anubis now presents a proof-of-work challenge page to visitors, aiming to shield websites from AI scrapers whose heavy automated traffic can trigger server downtime.
The system borrows from Hashcash-style proof-of-work: a small computational cost is negligible for individual users but compounds quickly for large-scale scraping operations.
Website administrators describe it as a stopgap while they build better bot detection, including fingerprinting headless browsers through signals such as font-rendering behavior.
Modern JavaScript is required to pass the challenge, and privacy tools such as JShelter may block it unless users disable them for the affected domain.