At work I was asked by a different team how we can deal with bots, because someone in my team remembered that I knew how to do it.

I reluctantly suggested Anubis because I got shit for it last time, This is the URL https://anubis.techaro.lol/

This is the 2nd and last time I will ever recommend Anubis anywhere at work to deal with bots because of how unprofessional, un-serious and weird others perceive it.

image
The mascot being a ~10 year old "cutsie" anime cat girl is weird in a work setting.
I will never put myself in a situation again where I have to explain that it's not weird to anyone again, same for that URL.

What is a professional looking open-source alternative to Anubis?

Edit: No I can't just send my colleges here https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper The issue is they find the Mascot and domain weird, they will still run into both.

My Goal: Recommend a Open-Source bot protection tool

The Issue: When I send my coworkers to https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper they find the mascot and URL weird.

Result: They don't see Anubis as a serious tool and turn away from it

What is a professional looking open-source alternative to Anubis?

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[–] 61 points 20 hours ago (16 children)

@Ek-Hou-Van-Braai Hi, tomska's law is in play and I have been linked this thread. I am the Anubis dev. I am having my agent work on a soulless generic corporate website for BotStopper with one of the most painfully boring layouts imaginable, including a random WebGL effect on the homepage for no reason.

I couldn't get a .com so I hope the corporate drones you work with will not balk at the sheer horror of a .net domain.

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  • [–] 32 points 18 hours ago* (1 child)

    That's fine and all, but this version should cost money. Not as much as cloudflare, so corpos go for it, but definitely more than enough to fund you.

    If they want free, they can use the anime .lol cat girl. If that's "too much" for them, then they can pay for the generic .net version.

    That's my opinion, at least.

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  • [–] 19 points 18 hours ago

    Just wanted to chime in and say that OP's experience is exactly how it would go down at my workplace too, despite the deluge of downvotes they're getting, and I also likely would have looked at alternatives instead of proposing it, for the sake of my professional reputation. I think it's likely true for a ton of people.

    That's not to say that people aren't being over-serious if they see the original branding and balk at it, but that's out of OP's hands.

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  • [–] [S] 16 points 20 hours ago* (10 children)

    .net is perfectly fine, and C-Suites won't frown at it.

    Thanks for this, I really want to integrate your tool,

    Plain and boring sounds great, I'd much rather see us using Open-Source tools than just turn to cloudflare or something, these changes would make it possible for me and others to push for this at work.

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  • [–] 32 points 19 hours ago (9 children)

    @Ek-Hou-Van-Braai I have made https://botstopper.net/. It is vibecoded as a stylistic choice. Everything in docs/ is copied from the BotStopper repo but with some information that would give attakcers hints deleted.

    Enjoy the utter lack of whimsy.

    As an aside, please DM me somehow. I have feedback to give about your post.

    https://botstopper.net/

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  • [–] 12 points 17 hours ago*

    Nice. And you made sure to mention Anubis, but without it being a clickable link.

    Perfect for many of the fun-policing prudes I've worked with. (They will never ever actually google a keyword themselves.)

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