Bot Shield overview

Bot Shield is the protection layer of SOptim. It sits between your storefront and your checkout, scoring every visitor in real time and acting on the score: allow, challenge, or block.

The six modules

Module	What it does	Available on
Access Control	Country/region block lists, IP allow lists, admin bypass	All plans
Visitor Analytics	See who's hitting your store, drill into individual sessions, CSV export	Grow+
Custom Rules	Block by ASN, user-agent, headers, or behavior with a rule editor	Scale+
Fraud Orders	Auto-flag risky orders before fulfillment	Grow+
Disputes	Generate chargeback evidence packets in two clicks	Max
Network Intelligence	Cross-shop reputation — block IPs flagged by other SOptim merchants	Scale+

Modes

In Bot Shield → Settings you choose one of three modes:

Auto-Pilot (default) — score every visitor, act on the score automatically. Safest for most shops.
Monitor only — score and log, but never block. Use this for your first week to see what we'd block.
Custom rules only — disable scoring, only enforce rules you've written by hand. Advanced.

How decisions are made

We score on six signals: IP reputation, ASN reputation, user-agent shape, behavioral entropy, network-intel hits, and (Scale+) custom rule matches. Each signal contributes a weight; the final score maps to one of three actions:

0–30 allow
30–70 challenge (invisible CAPTCHA)
70–100 block

The score is fail-open: if our detection service errors, we allow the visitor through. Better to let a bot in than block a real customer because our service had a hiccup.

Block page

Blocked visitors land on /apps/soptim/blocked — a Shopify App Proxy URL that renders your branded message. Customize it in Bot Shield → Access Control → Block page. See Access Control for details.