What is Daum?

Daum is a bot in the search engine crawlers category, operated by Daum.

Bot name
Daum
Operator
Daum
Type
Bot
Respects robots.txt
Yes
robots.txt user agent
Daum
Signs requests (Web Bot Auth)
No

About Daum

Korean search engine crawler

Search engine crawlers index your pages so they can appear in search results. Keep the genuine ones allowed and verify them, because fake search crawlers are one of the most common disguises for scrapers.

Daum user agent

Daum identifies itself with this user agent string:

  • Mozilla/5.0 (Unknown; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/538.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/538.1 Daum/4.1

Anyone can copy a user agent string. Transfon Security also checks where each request comes from, so a request that claims to be a known crawler but comes from the wrong network is treated as a fake, not as the real crawler.

How to block Daum in robots.txt

Daum follows robots.txt, so these rules stop it crawling the paths you choose. robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain, such as https://example.com/robots.txt.

Block Daum from the whole site

User-agent: Daum
Disallow: /

Block Daum from some folders

User-agent: Daum
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /search

Allow Daum only on some folders

User-agent: Daum
Allow: /blog/
Disallow: /

Allow Daum and block other crawlers

User-agent: Daum
Allow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Things to know

  • Each host needs its own file. Rules on www.example.com do not apply to shop.example.com.
  • A crawler obeys only the most specific group that names it. Once you add a User-agent: Daum group, Daum ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.
  • The user agent name is not case sensitive. We take Daum from Daum's user agent; check Daum's own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.
  • Crawlers cache robots.txt, so changes can take up to a day to apply. Disallow stops crawling but does not remove pages already collected or indexed.

Limits of robots.txt

  1. Daum may not follow the rule. Daum says it follows robots.txt, but nothing enforces that. Changes can take a day to apply, the operator can change its policy, and other crawlers from Daum use different names and rules.
  2. The user agent could be fake. robots.txt matches the name a request claims. Anyone can send Daum's user agent, and a scraper using it is not bound by Daum's robots.txt policy. Only checking the source network tells a real Daum from a fake one.

Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.

Who should care about Daum

Publishers

Daum brings search traffic, so keep the real one allowed. Fake Daum requests are a common cover for scrapers, so verify it by network rather than by name.

Transfon Security for publishers

Media buyers and advertisers

Search crawlers fetch landing pages to check them. Keep Daum allowed, but out of campaign and conversion data.

Transfon Security for advertisers

E-commerce

Daum indexes products for search results. Allow it, and block impersonators that use its name to scrape prices.

Transfon Security for e-commerce

SaaS and APIs

Allow Daum on marketing and docs pages, and keep it off signed-in app pages it cannot use.

Transfon Security for SaaS and APIs

Block Daum with Transfon Security

robots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows Daum by name in the Top Bots report, so you can see how often it visits and which pages it reads. Block or allow it with a User Agent rule, or slow it down with a rate limit decision rule.

Transfon Security

Control Daum on your site

  • See every Daum visit and the pages it reads
  • Spot bots that fake trusted crawler names
  • Block, allow or rate limit Daum with one rule
  • Works with or without robots.txt support

Frequently asked questions

What is Daum?

Daum is a bot in the search engine crawlers category, operated by Daum. Korean search engine crawler

Does Daum respect robots.txt?

Yes. Daum follows robots.txt, so a Disallow rule for the Daum user agent stops it from crawling the paths you list.

How do I block Daum?

Add "User-agent: Daum" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "Daum/" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.

Is robots.txt enough to block Daum?

No. robots.txt is voluntary, so Daum may not follow it, and anyone can send Daum's user agent, so a fake Daum ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.

Should I block Daum?

Search engine crawlers index your pages so they can appear in search results. Keep the genuine ones allowed and verify them, because fake search crawlers are one of the most common disguises for scrapers.

Related bots

All search engine crawlers · Full bot directory

See Which Bots Visit Your Site

Transfon Security identifies every bot in this directory in your traffic reports, flags fake search crawlers, and lets you allow, block or rate limit each bot.

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