> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.hockeystack.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.hockeystack.com/technical-details/tracking/identifying-users/about-bot-traffic.md).

# Bot Traffic

Analytics tools should be able to differentiate between real traffic vs bot traffic. At HockeyStack, we make this possible through three different methods:

### `navigator.webdriver` <a href="#block-49041e96a8e34e59882c32d0d40cad6b" id="block-49041e96a8e34e59882c32d0d40cad6b"></a>

This is not the most robust method, but it is the easiest to explain. Webdrivers control browsers remotely and act like real users to perform a variety of tasks, rangin from simple automations to data crawling. By default, they should enable this variable in the `navigator` object, so we check it to eliminate possible bot traffic.

### IP Address <a href="#block-394c80278c26442ebbbcc8363451f867" id="block-394c80278c26442ebbbcc8363451f867"></a>

This is a lot more common. Most crawlers and performance tools have specific IP adresses that they reach their website from. We keep and update a list of those in order to recognize the traffic. Keep in mind that we don't store any tracked IP addresses, and these are just deleted once a response has been sent from the server.

### User-Agent <a href="#block-46d0990c95734db5a765b5fd657ffff8" id="block-46d0990c95734db5a765b5fd657ffff8"></a>

Very much like IP addresses, we store a list of terms that bot traffic insert to their user agents. This is updated the most frequently and is checked first on the browser-side in order to prevent any requests being sent to our servers.

If you suspect that HockeyStack is not able to detect a certain bot, we are more than happy to update our lists! Just write us through the live support chat or send an email to <hello@hockeystack.com>.


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