Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

Re:Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% o... by loopdoend on Monday July 30, 2012 @11:08PM (#4315477)

Another great way of detecting bots is to redirect the visitor through an SSL connection and sniff their cipher suite. By comparing the list of ciphers the bot presents with a list of known ciphers of major browsers, you can accurately detect a majority of bots. Many bot authors use the same few libraries which never change their cipher suite.

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Re:Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% o... by mthoms on Tuesday July 31, 2012 @06:41PM (#4320024)

This seems brilliant. Are there any downsides?

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Re:Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% o... by loopdoend on Tuesday July 31, 2012 @09:04PM (#4320584)

There is a slight performance hit, there is overhead added by creating SSL connections. However, using this method you can detect most cURL bots, practically all bots written in Ruby, and myriad other bots that are lying about their User-Agent. Combine it with other techniques for maximum effectiveness.

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