For forums and communities
Bots spam and scrape your forum.
Strazh keeps them off the server
Spam signups, fake activity and thread scrapers take up your server and blur community metrics. Strazh lets people and search crawlers through and sends suspicious visitors to a check before the request reaches the forum.
Free pilot: we block nothing, and in 1–2 weeks we show you a report on the bots visiting your site.
Pilot on a large forum network: about a quarter of requests reach the forum servers. Measured over one day, details and caveats below.
What bots do on a forum
Moderators clean up after them, while the server keeps answering bots.
Sign up to spam
Batches of accounts, links in signatures and threads, fake activity. Moderation spends hours cleaning up.
Scrape threads and profiles
Forum content is copied wholesale, member profiles included.
Load the server
Every bot request goes through the engine and the database. The server spends resources on visitors who never read the forum.
Pilot on a forum network
Pilot, measured over one day. Measurement in progressA large forum network, enforce mode since 3 Nov 2026. Figures for the first day; forum server metrics “before” and “after” are being collected now and will be added when ready.
21–27%
of requests reach the forum servers
About a quarter. The rest get a check page (≈ 70–75%) or are refused (≈ 1%).
0.17%
of addresses passed the check
602 of 360,657 addresses that were shown a check page.
6.4%
of visitors from Russia saw the check button
39 of 606 visitors with JavaScript, 22 of them passed. That is the honest price: some people spend one click.
Hourly data from 13:00 3 Nov to 04:00 4 Nov 2026 UTC, 40–70 thousand requests per hour went through Strazh. The 6.4% share is an estimate as of 4 Nov 2026, not recalculated.
This is the share of requests Strazh did not let through, not a measured load on the forum servers: there is no honest “before” baseline, and server CPU and response metrics were not collected. Bots retry requests to the check page, so incoming traffic grew after protection was turned on.
How many real people are among the addresses shown a check is unknown. There are no behavior metrics for this pilot yet.
Your forum server answers people,
not those who came to spam.
How the pilot works
We connect in observe mode
We install Strazh next to your web server and turn on a check for every request. The forum engine stays as it is. Strazh lets everyone through and only records whom it would have stopped.
We collect data for 1–2 weeks
How many bots come, from where, which pages they open and how many requests they make. Members notice nothing.
We show you the report
You see the bots on your forum and decide whether to turn protection on. The pilot commits you to nothing.
How it works
For whoever runs the server
A check on every request. Before responding, the web server asks Strazh (auth_request). There are three outcomes: let through, show a check page, or refuse. A bot request never reaches the forum engine or the database.
What it looks at. The TLS handshake fingerprint (JA4), the network and hosting the request comes from (ASN), country, browser headers and whether they match the User‑Agent, and the address history. Signals add up to a score; the higher it is, the stricter the check.
What a visitor sees. People pass without a check: the decision takes milliseconds. Bots you need (page-speed checks, link previews in messengers and social networks) can be allowed in the rules.
The check page. A person presses a button and gets a pass; its duration is set in the site settings. The page script also looks for traces of browser automation.
Search crawlers. Their pass is set in the rules; usually Google, Yandex and Bing are let through without limits. Strazh recognizes real crawlers by reverse DNS.
Two modes. In observe mode (observe) Strazh lets everyone through and logs whom it would have stopped. In enforce mode (enforce) decisions are applied. The pilot runs in observe mode.
If Strazh is unavailable. If the service does not answer within 300 ms, the web server lets the visitor through.
Frequently asked questions
Will forum members see a captcha?
During the pilot, nobody: Strazh only observes. With protection on, some people see a check button. On the pilot forum network, 6.4% of visitors from Russia with JavaScript saw it. The pass duration after the check is set in the site settings.
Will the forum drop out of search?
Search crawlers are set up in the rules. Usually we let Google, Yandex and Bing through without limits.
What happens if Strazh breaks?
The web server waits no longer than 300 ms. If Strazh is down or too slow, the visitor goes through to the forum.
Do I need to change the forum engine?
No. We do not touch the engine or templates. We need access to the web server configuration. If you have no access, we connect through our front: you change the DNS record of your own domain (an own domain is required).
What data does Strazh see?
The same as your web server log: address, page path, browser headers and cookies. Message texts and passwords never reach Strazh.
How much does it cost?
The pilot is free and commits you to nothing. We discuss protection terms after the pilot, once you have the report.
Get a bot report for your forum
Free pilot: we block nothing, and in 1–2 weeks we show you a report on the bots visiting your site.
- How many requests to your forum come from bots
- Where they come from and which pages they open
- How many visitors Strazh would send to a check with protection on