Link Click Protection Overview
More and more frequently we are seeing bots clicking on links in emails which can skew reporting statistics in Vuture. Typically this is where a recipient firm has installed some kind of email security software which scans the links in incoming emails. If the security software does this by actually following the link it can register a Click in Vuture which will also register an Open if the email has not already been opened.
Whenever a link is clicked the email client or bot clicking the link sends a User Agent header to identify the email client. Well-behaved bots will send a User Agent that identifies them as a bot and Option 1 below can be used to block this activity.
If a bot sends a User Agent that looks like a normal recipient then we need to look for other patterns to block this link clicked activity. Typically bots will click all the links in quick succession and we can use Option 2 below to look for multiple links clicked in a short period of time.
1. User Agent Click Protection
Blocking links clicked by bots based on User Agent
To protect your links being clicked by bots and affecting your Vuture statistics, you can block clicks from specific unwanted User Agents.
User Agents are how an email client or web browser identifies itself. Well behaved bots will send a User Agent that distinguishes itself from a human operated email client or browser.
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Global User Agent Protection
Vuture by default protects all clients against the following user agent patterns (this is managed by the Vuture Infrastructure Team using our Signal Sciences Web Application Firewall):
^python-*
^lua-resty-http* MauiBot
Adsbot BLEXBot domainreanimator Barkrowler bot@linguee.com SemanticScholarBot bot@linkfluence.com CCBot
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To block additional specific User Agents from your Vuture instance contact your Client Success Manager or Vuture Support who can configure this by adding User Agents to be blocked to the setting "Admin.System.Emails.Block UserAgent Links Clicked". (Vuture Team please notify the #techservices-vu Slack channel when adding these so we can decide if it should be added to the Global User Agent Protection List).
The User Agents should be added wrapped in double quotation marks (“”) and comma separated for multiple entries.
Mimecast uses a security scanning bot with User Agent "WebClient/1.0" which can be blocked using the example above.
Finding out the User Agent for a particular link clicked
Vuture records the User Agent for each link clicked but this information is currently not available through standard Vuture reporting. To find this out please provide details of the link or links that are being clicked to Vuture Support or your Client Success Manager who can request this information from our Product Services team (from the "tblEmailLink.HttpUserAgent" database field).
2. Rapid Click Protection
Blocking links clicked by bots based on multiple clicks in a short space of time
Where bots click on multiple links in a short space of time we can set a Link Clicked threshold configuration that discounts multiple clicks from the same recipient within a given time period. The default is 0.5 seconds but this can be varied.
This can be configured by your Client Success Manager using the following process:
- Set "Admin.System.Emails.Block MultiClicks Threshold In Seconds" to the required value. This is the gap between clicks by the same recipient under which links clicked will be ignored. We recommend a value of 0.5 (seconds) which can be increased if it does not catch all the bot clicks.
- Enable "Admin.System.Emails.Bot Click Filter Queue Enabled"
- Enable the Scheduled Task "EmailLinkClickQueueProcessingTask" at Admin.Services with a 1-minute interval e.g. "minute;09:00;1"
3. Targeting Specific Campaigns
In addition to the User Agent Click Protection, if clients have any concerns about specific users on campaigns we can identify which IP Address they are coming from and block these from appearing in future reporting. Please discuss this with your Client Success Manager.
