Skip to main content

User targeting with Arc XP

Arc XP provides user targeting features that allow you to block malicious actors and protect your sites. This guide outlines the available targeting methods, how to request support, and an option to upgrade to enhanced bot protection.

Targeting methods

You can request blocking of traffic using the following criteria:

  • Geographic regions - block access by continents, country, region, or state. For example, Europe, Slovenia, southeast Slovenia.

  • User Agents (UA) - block access based on specific or wildcard user agent strings. For example, TOR/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:47.0) *google bot*

  • IP address or CIDR ranges - block access by IP address or range. For example, 192.168.129.23, 192.168.129.23/17.

Requesting user targeting

To initiate a request, follow these steps:

  1. Contact Arc XP Customer Support and choose Other Assistance.

  2. Add a summary like, "Block access to <site> for specific IP/User Agent."

  3. In the ticket description, specify all relevant details and indicate if the request is urgent.

Enhanced bot protection

Arc XP's standard targeting is effective for known threads, but not specialized in blocking rapidly evolving or spoofed bot traffic. Bots often rotate through IPs and user agents, making manual blocking difficult and resource-intensive. You must also differentiate between good bots (such as search engine crawlers) and harmful bots, which can affect SEO and performance.

To address this, Arc XP maintains a strategic CDN partner who provides enhanced bot protection. This solution includes:

  • Automated detection and mitigation of bot attacks using AI and global traffic data

  • Advanced threat detection and proactive interception of attacks in progress

  • Intelligent traffic classification to distinguish between legitimate users and bots

  • Tiered responses to block bots without revealing defensive mechanisms

  • Reduced manual effort, which results in fewer supports tickets for ongoing mitigation

To learn more about enhanced bot protection and to request pricing details, contact Arc XP Customer Support.

In this section: