Shopify Inc.
HIDDEN LINE PROPERTY OF ONLINE CONTENT TO INHIBIT BOT ACTIVITY

Abstract:

Disclosed are systems and methods that require/force bots to access and interact with webpages at a similar level to humans, by including an executable script that generates/updates a test value for a webpage. The client devices must perform certain processing and/or rendering of the webpage to call the computations necessary for generating the updated test value. The script must be executed as a function of processing and/or rendering the webpage. The script may be retrieved from the webserver as a function of processing and/or rendering the webpage. When the browser executes this script, the browser generates the updated test value. At some point, the client device submits a request for certain process with the updated test value. The server compares the inbound test value from the client device against an initial/previously received test value or an expected test value to determine whether the browser is being operated by a human.