Perplexity AI—Cloudflare exposed Perplexity using stealth crawlers to bypass website restrictions
In August 2025, Cloudflare published research finding Perplexity used undeclared 'stealth' web crawlers to bypass robots.txt files and web application firewalls across tens of thousands of domains and millions of requests daily. When blocked, Perplexity would obscure its crawling identity to circumvent website preferences. Cloudflare de-listed Perplexity as a verified bot. Perplexity accused Cloudflare of 'incompetence and publicity-seeking.'
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| User Privacy | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.885 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
Cloudflare exposed Perplexity using stealth crawlers to bypass website restrictions
In August 2025, Cloudflare published research finding Perplexity used undeclared 'stealth' web crawlers to bypass robots.txt files and web application firewalls across tens of thousands of domains and millions of requests daily. When blocked, Perplexity would obscure its crawling identity to circumvent website preferences. Cloudflare de-listed Perplexity as a verified bot. Perplexity accused Cloudflare of 'incompetence and publicity-seeking.'