Bots Creating Fake Spikes in Traffic! Help!

[Vegan Gaymer]

My community is a low-tier community that does not have more than 50 people online at any given time, but recently we are getting bombarded by what appears to be bots/spiders that cause IPS to read as if we have hundreds of people online at the same time. This forces my payment plan with IPS to jump up several tiers. IPS is helping me to navigate this, but we can't figure out why/what is causing these spikes.

Do any of you know how to stop this from happening and what might be causing it?

Thank you so much for your help. I will go completely broke and lose my community if my plan jumps to a top-tier plan over and over like this.

I appreciate any help.

Troy

[David..]

If you think it's bots, check your access logs and if you see an unknown bot accessing the server too many times, block it completely.

Make sure it's not a DDoS attack.

[Vegan Gaymer]

Which logs? I'm hosted by the cloud platform. I don't see "access logs."

[David..]

Self hosted communities are limited to what you can do, so your only help here may be contacting IPS and asking what's going on.

[O9C4]

IPS support are very reliable regarding the issue with bots overloading online users limit. I have the same issue very often.

[Vegan Gaymer]

@O9C4 and @David.. That's what I've been doing. They are having a hard time isolating it and controlling it, so I thought I'd ask you guys, too. But you are right, they are flawless in their support. They are my heroes. So are many of you who have helped me over the years when in a pinch!