Bot & Fraud Detection
How SMLLR automatically identifies and flags suspicious or bot-generated scans in your analytics.
What is Bot Detection?
Not all scans on your QR codes come from real human customers. Some scans are generated by:
- Web crawlers and bots that automatically follow URLs on the internet
- QR scanner apps that pre-fetch URLs without an actual human scanning
- Automated testing tools used in development
- Fraudulent inflation (rare, but possible in competitive environments)
SMLLR's fraud detection system analyses each scan and assigns it a fraud score from 0 to 100. High-scoring scans are automatically flagged as suspected bots.
Signals Used for Bot Detection
| Signal | What It Means |
|---|---|
BOT_UA | The User-Agent string matches a known bot or crawler signature |
HEADLESS_BROWSER | The scan came from a headless browser (a browser run by code, not a person) |
SUSPICIOUS_UA | The User-Agent string looks unusual or malformed |
REPEAT_IP | The same IP address scanned the same QR code many times in a short period |
RAPID_SCANS | An unusually high number of scans from the same source in seconds |
IMPOSSIBLE_GEO | The scan location changed impossibly fast between consecutive scans (e.g. Mumbai then New York within 1 minute) |
Excluding Bot Scans from Your Reports
Excluding bot scans gives you a cleaner picture of your real human audience and more accurate marketing insights.
Go to Reporting
Click Reporting in the left sidebar.
Find the Fraud Filter toggle
At the top of the analytics dashboard, find the Exclude Bot Scans toggle.
Toggle it on
When enabled, all scans with a high fraud score are excluded from the charts, summary metrics, and exports. The raw data is still stored — you are just filtering the view.
False Positives — Legitimate Scans Flagged as Bot
Occasionally, legitimate scans may be flagged — for example, a power user who scans the same menu QR code every day. If you notice a legitimate scan pattern being flagged, you can disable the bot filter temporarily to include all scans.
If you believe your account has a systematic false-positive issue, contact SMLLR support at [email protected].
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