PhantomJS is a bot in the headless browsers category.
PhantomJS is a discontinued headless browser built on WebKit. It is no longer maintained, so almost all traffic with this user agent today comes from old scraping or automation scripts.
Headless browsers run a full browser engine without a screen. They are used for testing, rendering and scraping sites that need JavaScript. Most scrapers that evade simple checks run in a headless browser, so client side detection matters more than the user agent here.
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.
PhantomJS does not read robots.txt. The rules below record your policy, but they will not stop it. To actually block PhantomJS, use a WAF rule as shown in the next section.
User-agent: PhantomJS Disallow: /
User-agent: PhantomJS Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /search
User-agent: PhantomJS Allow: /blog/ Disallow: /
User-agent: PhantomJS Allow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /
User-agent: PhantomJS group, PhantomJS ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.PhantomJS from PhantomJS's user agent; check the operator's own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.
PhantomJS is a common tool for scrapers. Real readers never use it, so block it on article pages and keep it out of ad requests.
Transfon Security for publishersTraffic from PhantomJS on landing pages is automated. It inflates clicks and visits, so filter it from campaign data and raise it with the ad network.
Transfon Security for advertisersPrice scrapers, stock checkers and card testing scripts often run on PhantomJS. Block it on product, cart and checkout pages.
Transfon Security for e-commercePhantomJS is normal for API clients but not for your web app. Allow it only on API routes that need a key, and rate limit it there.
Transfon Security for SaaS and APIsPhantomJS ignores robots.txt, so it has to be stopped when the request arrives. Transfon Security shows PhantomJS 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
PhantomJS is a bot in the headless browsers category. PhantomJS is a discontinued headless browser built on WebKit. It is no longer maintained, so almost all traffic with this user agent today comes from old scraping or automation scripts.
No. PhantomJS does not follow robots.txt, so a Disallow rule will not stop it. Block it by user agent at your server, CDN or WAF instead.
Block requests whose user agent contains "PhantomJS" at your server, CDN or WAF, because PhantomJS does not read robots.txt. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.
No. robots.txt is voluntary, so PhantomJS may not follow it, and anyone can send PhantomJS's user agent, so a fake PhantomJS ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.
Headless browsers run a full browser engine without a screen. They are used for testing, rendering and scraping sites that need JavaScript. Most scrapers that evade simple checks run in a headless browser, so client side detection matters more than the user agent here.
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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