How to block Known Agent
Operated by Known Agents. Known Agents helps website owners track, control, and optimize traffic from AI agents and bots.
How it identifies itself
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Known Agent/1.0; +https://knownagents.com)
robots.txt
What the agent asks to be told. It obeys this or it does not — nothing enforces it.
User-agent: Known Disallow: /
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 ~* "(Known Agent|Known)") {
return 403;
}
Apache
In .htaccess or the vhost.
BrowserMatchNoCase "Known Agent" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Known" 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 "Known Agent") or (http.user_agent contains "Known")
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 (['Known Agent', 'Known'] as $needle) {
if (stripos($agent, $needle) !== false) {
status_header(403);
exit('Blocked: Known Agent');
}
}
});
robots.txt is a request. The rules below it are the wall.
Known Agent publishes a token, so the directive above will work for as long as it keeps honouring it — and nothing except its own good manners makes it. 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.