How to block Do Not Track Verifier
Operated by Electronic Frontier Foundation. is operated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to test whether websites properly implement Do Not Track (DNT) browser signals. The bot checks if … Developer Helper Assists with testing, debugging, and ensuring website functionality
How it identifies itself
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; Win64; fr; rv:1.8.1) VoilaBot BETA 1.2 ([email protected])
nginx
In the server block, then reload.
# In the server block. 403 rather than 444: a closed connection tells the # operator nothing, and an agent that gets a status code can log it. if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Electronic Frontier Foundation's Do Not Track Verifier (for questions or concerns email [email protected])|Do Not Track Verifier)") { return 403; }
Apache
In .htaccess or the vhost.
BrowserMatchNoCase "Electronic Frontier Foundation's Do Not Track Verifier" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Do Not Track Verifier" bad_bot
<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not env bad_bot
</RequireAll>
Cloudflare
Security → WAF → Custom rules.
# Security → WAF → Custom rules, action: Block (http.user_agent contains "Electronic Frontier Foundation's Do Not Track Verifier") or (http.user_agent contains "Do Not Track Verifier")
WordPress
A child theme's functions.php, or a small plugin.
// functions.php of a child theme, or a small plugin. Runs before WordPress
// builds the page, so a blocked agent costs one PHP process and no queries.
add_action('init', function () {
$agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
foreach (['Electronic Frontier Foundation\'s Do Not Track Verifier', 'Do Not Track Verifier'] as $needle) {
if (stripos($agent, $needle) !== false) {
status_header(403);
exit('Blocked: Do Not Track Verifier');
}
}
});
A rule on the user agent is a rule on a string it chose
The server rules match on a header the requester sets, which stops the agent that says who it is and not the one that copies somebody else's name. Botscope verifies identity against DNS and published address ranges, records which check decided each request, and shows you the ones that lied.