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Karstan Bock

dblp:408/7096 · DBLP profile ↗
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1ranked-venue papers
0as first author
1since 2021 · last 2025
0009-0004-2613-4514ORCID · reported

Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several

Computer networks · 1 · 1 since 2021

Expertise — from the expertise taxonomy: the topics of the expert's papers under the CCF categories. A weight counts papers with recency: 1 for a paper about the topic, 0.3 when the topic is its context, halved every five years.

Computer networks
1 paper
Network measurement and analytics · 77% Internet architecture and protocols · 23%
Network and information security
1 paper
Web and mobile security · 100%

Topics — the 1 heaviest of 3, each with the papers that count most for it

TopicWeightPapersLastEvidence papers
Network measurement and analytics
web measurement
0.912025
Scrapers Selectively Respect robots.txt Directives: Evidence From a Large-Scale Empirical Study · IMC 2025

Methods — techniques the papers use, named apart from their topics

web log analysis · 1.7controlled experiments · 0.9controlled experiment · 0.9
YearPublicationVenuePosition
2025 Scrapers Selectively Respect robots.txt Directives: Evidence From a Large-Scale Empirical Study
abstract
Online data scraping has taken on new dimensions in recent years, as traditional scrapers have been joined by new AI-specific bots. To counteract unwanted scraping, many sites use tools like the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), which places a robots.txt file at the site root to dictate scraper behavior. Yet, the efficacy of the REP is not well-understood. Anecdotal evidence suggests some bots comply poorly with it, but no rigorous study exists to support (or refute) this claim. To understand the merits and limits of the REP, we conduct the first large-scale study of web scraper compliance with robots.txt directives using anonymized web logs from our institution. We analyze the behavior of 130 self-declared bots (and many anonymous ones) over 40 days, using a series of controlled robots.txt experiments. We find that bots are less likely to comply with stricter robots.txt directives, and that certain categories of bots, including AI search crawlers, rarely check robots.txt at all. Our findings suggest that relying on robots.txt to prevent unwanted scraping is risky and highlight the need for alternatives.
Taein Kim, Karstan Bock, Claire Luo, Amanda Liswood, Chloe Poroslay, Emily Wenger
IMC2