Guide to Botnet Protection

Botnet Protection exists to stop people and bots who are spoofing their location from entering a survey. As it currently exists, it focuses only on assessing survey participants connecting via a VPN to validate/invalidate that their IP location matches their physical location.

We have a list of well-known points of interest around the globe, and based on the participant's location, we ask them which of the places is closest to them.

The participant has 30 seconds to answer the botnet question. If they do not complete the question in time, they will be Security Terminated.

Enabling Botnet Protection

Botnet protection must be enabled in the project's Security Marketplace.

Conditionally Showing Botnet Protection

Only participants who are actively using a VPN to connect to dtect are shown the Botnet question.

There are other situations which can lead to a participant skipping the botnet question. If you feel there is a participant who was not shown the botnet question and they should have been, please contact your Customer Success Manager to learn more.

Evaluating Botnet Answers

If the participant's answer is wrong, they will be redirected to the supplier’s Security Terminate redirect, their session will be recorded as “Security Terminate” in dtect and the dtect status Description for that in the CSV export will be “botnet protection”.

If the answer is correct they will move to Quality Questions (if enabled) or be sent to the survey and get “complete” status on dtect.

FAQ

Question: Are the questions translated?

The questions are translated to all the supported languages on participant app. See Non-English Participant Experience for more information on dtect's supported languages.

Question: How can I test what a participant sees?

You must use the Live Entry Link as it’s always skipped while using the Test Entry Link. You must also test while using a VPN in order to trigger the Botnet Question.

Question: How can I see the results of the botnet question?

When exporting project data on “Progress” tab the user will have a few columns to check users terminated by the botnet protection question

dtect Status Description: botnet protection
dtect Status: security_terminate
Botnet Protection: Fail