Bot protection and firewalls
What to do when a firewall, CDN or bot protection blocks the scanner.
Some firewalls and CDNs block unknown crawlers. The scan then fails, or it scans an error page instead of your site. There are two ways to let the scanner through:
- Allow its user agent. The scanner's User-Agent contains
AccessibilityBriefBot. Add an allow rule for it in your firewall or CDN. - Send a secret header. In the site's settings, under Let our scanner past bot protection, add a header name and value (for example a token your firewall checks). The header is sent only with requests to that site, never to other websites, and the value is stored encrypted.
Use a token made only for this purpose, and remove it from your firewall when you no longer need it.
Common scan errors
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| The site's robots.txt asks automated tools not to scan this page | Allow AccessibilityBriefBot in robots.txt, or accept that the page is excluded. |
| We could not read the site's robots.txt file | Make sure /robots.txt answers without a server error (a missing file is fine). |
| We could not reach the page | Check that the page is public and online, and not blocked by a firewall. |
| The page took too long to load | Try again; if it keeps happening, check the page's speed or server load. |
| We could not sign in to the site with the saved login | Run Test login in the site's settings and correct the details. |
| The owner of this site has asked not to be scanned | The domain is on our block list. Contact us if it is your site. |
Still stuck? Write to us and we will help. Contact support