IP Obfuscation - Does the Bot Filter recognize obfuscated IPs?

[Natatxa]

Hi, 

We've recently enabled 'Obfuscate IP address' in our account settings, so the data getting stored is now a hashed value in Data Warehouse. Prior to this, we would run reports regularly to determine if an IP was suspicious, and if deemed as such, remove it through bot filtering. Now that the data is obfuscated, will the hashed value be identifiable by the bot filter? Or can we no longer remove suspicious IPs going forward because we won't be able to get actual IPs out of Data Warehouse?

[VaniBhemarasetty · Accepted solution]

@Natatxa This should help documentation should help answer your question

The IAB bot list is based solely on user agent, so filtering based on that list is not impacted by IP obfuscation settings. For non-IAB bot filtering (custom rules), IP may be part of the filtering criteria. If filtering bots using IP, bot filtering happens after the last octet has been removed if that setting is enabled, but before the other IP obfuscation options, such as deleting the entire IP or replacing it with some unique ID.

If IP obfuscation is enabled, IP exclusion happens before the IP address is obfuscated, so customers do not need to change anything when they enable IP obfuscation.

If the last octet is removed, that is done before IP filtering. As such, the last octet is replaced with a 0, and IP exclusion rules should be updated to match IP addresses with a zero on the end. Matching * should match 0.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/admin/admin-tools/bot-removal/bot-rules.html?lang=...

[GPeden]

(deleted)

[Natatxa]

Thank you, we're set up with IP obfuscation enabled, so the order of operations is fine. But we do use a custom rule that lists the IP addresses to remove based on analysis of a Data Warehouse export. Does this mean the hashed value is kinda useless considering that's what's in Data Warehouse now? I've tried to find documentation on how the values can be used but I'm struggling. The IAB method doesn't quite work for all the exclusions we manage.