Cloudflare accuses Perplexity of 'stealth crawling' websites
Cloudflare's CEO, Matthew Prince, says the AI company Perplexity has been "stealth crawling" websites—basically dodging site protections by switching up IP addresses and pretending to be different users, just to get around blocks like robots.txt.
Cloudflare ran tests and found that Perplexity's chatbot could still grab info from new sites even when told not to.
Prince compared Perplexity's tactics to 'North Korean hackers'
After Cloudflare blocked Perplexity's bots, the chatbot's answers got noticeably less detailed—suggesting it was relying on scraped content before.
Prince compared these tactics to "North Korean hackers" (ouch), and the context of his statements implies a warning to website owners to keep an eye out for sneaky crawlers like this.
Prince co-founded Cloudflare in 2009
Prince co-founded Cloudflare back in 2009 and has a pretty diverse background: he studied English Literature and Computer Science, plus holds law and business degrees.
He's known for taking a tough stance on online threats, drawing a clear line between helpful tech and shady actors online.