fuzzycanary
Security and privacy
anti-scraping defense
SHOW HN2025
How HN took it
6 positive, 13 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 23 critical, out of 44 comments about the project. Thread score -0.37.
Idea: 6 for, 14 againstExecution: 0 for, 4 againstDesign: 0 for, 2 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Creative, entertaining idea
From 2 comments
I love the insanity of this idea. Not saying it's a good idea, but it's a very highly entertaining one, and I like that! I've also had enormous luck with Anubis. AI scrapers…
kstrauser on HNThis is a very creative hack to a common, growing problem. Well done! Also, I like that you acknowledge it's a bad idea: that gives you more freedom to experiment and iterate.
samename on HN
Objections
Cloaking different content to search engines can get sites banned
From 1 comment
> checks user agents and won't show the links to legitimate search engines, so Google and Bing won't see them. Serving different contents to search engines is called "cloaking"…
jakub_g on HN
Cloudflare already offers free bot mitigation
From 1 comment
Cloudflare offers bot mitigation for free, and pretty generous WAF rules that makes mitigations like this seem a little overblown to me
JohnMakin on HN
User agents are easily spoofed; verify by IP or reverse DNS
From 2 comments
So fuzzycanary also checks user agents and won't show the links to legitimate search engines, so Google and Bing won't see them. Unscrupulous AI scrapers will not be using a…
onion2k on HN> user agents and won't show the links to legitimate search engines, so Google and Bing won't see them Worth noting that in general if you do any "is this Google or not" you…
dewey on HN
Could get the blog flagged as porn by corporate proxies
From 2 comments
Ah, I wonder if corporate proxies will end up flagging your blog as porn, if you protect it this way?
MayeulC on HNIsn't there a risk to get your blog blocked in corporate environment though? If it's a technical blog that would be unfortunate.
wazoox on HN
Questions
Do scrapers actually stop after seeing the links?
From 1 comment
> scrapers can ingest them and say "nope we won't scrape there again in the future" Do all the AI scrapers actually do that?
owl57 on HN
How to avoid links showing for static site generators
From 1 comment
Alternatives named
Anubis
From 1 comment
I love the insanity of this idea. Not saying it's a good idea, but it's a very highly entertaining one, and I like that! I've also had enormous luck with Anubis. AI scrapers…
kstrauser on HN
Cloudflare
From 2 comments
Disclosure, I've not run a website since my health issues began, however, Cloudflare has an AI firewall, Cloudflare is super cheap (also: unsure if the AI firewall is on the free…
eek2121 on HNCloudflare offers bot mitigation for free, and pretty generous WAF rules that makes mitigations like this seem a little overblown to me
JohnMakin on HN
webdecoy
From 1 comment
That's a pretty hilarious idea, but in all serious you could use something like https://webdecoy.com/
cport1 on HN
zip bomb protection
From 1 comment
Reminds me of poisoning bot responses with zip bombs of sorts: https://idiallo.com/blog/zipbomb-protection
montroser on HN