Bot detection identification means that when an automated tool accesses someone else's website, it identifies itself in the request header with its own designation, and ideally also with a contact detail or a link to a page explaining what it collects and why. The difference compared with disguising itself as an ordinary browser is fundamental, not only technically but also legally – deliberately circumventing protective measures and pretending to be a human visitor pushes the activity into the territory of unauthorised access. A transparent bot also has a practical advantage: the website operator can tell it apart from an attack, knows who to contact if a problem arises instead of blocking it outright, and sometimes will offer direct access to the data through an interface. Search engines and language model tools apply the same principle, publicly documenting their bots.
See also: Legal aspects of scraping, Rate limiting and ethical scraping, Meta rules for AI bots.
