Bot Protection
Answered
We had a Kahoot game with 1000+ players (mostly bots) and it crashed. Can you stop the bots?
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Official comment
Hi all,
Over the last several months, we've made big gains in preventing the usage of bots. This is an ongoing issue that we are continuing to tackle. Our sincere apologies to those that have experienced this.
If you believe someone used a bot to flood a game you hosted, please email our support team the following:
- your username
- the title of the kahoot you hosted
- when you started hosting it (date/time and timezone)
- the assigned game PIN
Our support team will share that info with our developers who are constantly investigating bot services and how to disable them. Unfortunately, bots are a tricky thing to prevent. There are no immediate fixes to blocking bot services before they're used. But we are regularly implementing fixes to disable the ones we learn about.
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I think you will find that it is a lot more common than you are aware. Every time I try to play a Kahoot with my seventh grade class it happens and makes it impossible to continue play. It makes any data that is generated useless. The suggestion to use the name generator is not helpful as we then have no way of knowing which student is which. I will try the two step join game option. I wish it were possible to create a class as you can with Gimkit and the students then have only the option to choose from the names you have entered and no one outside the class can join.
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We are still working on this issue.
Aside from the technical things we're trying to do to prevent bots, we also need to think about what can be done to prevent students from wanting to use these services. Something we've been made aware of is that students tend to use bot services if they feel that gameplay is too challenging. There are many potential factors that could cause that sentiment. But one thing that almost certainly decreases that challenge is when they're paired together with peers.
Have students pair up in groups of 3-6 and huddle around a single device. They will enter a PIN, team name, and their own nicknames. Then they can take turns holding the device and answering questions, discussing answer options with teammates if they're unsure.
I see many of you have tried 2-step and name generator without success. If possible, please give team mode a try.
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I am saddened that you haven't fixed the problem. I want a class game, not a world game. I just spent hard-earned funds for nothing valuable. Sorry, but I want meaningful usable data. I watched my students-all phones on desks-and started the game. Within one second, we had 40 users. NONE were mine. Useless.
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I've been using Kahoot for 4 years now and this is only the 2nd time it's happened but it is frustrating. The first time it happened we had over 600+ players. We're a class of 30. It happened again today with an additional 200 players. At times it will overload the game and crash everyone's devices. This really is something that needs a solution or it will be impossible to use Kahoot for reviews.
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Today I had to completely re-do my review for the state exam tomorrow because the Kahoot was botted. This is ridiculous. If this were a one-off student writing their own bot I'd accept the lack of action, but there are online botting services that the students are using to destroy this game. In at least one of my class periods we can no longer use this tool because even with two factor login the bots get through.
I also resent you trying to take an issue with your program and make it our problem by saying its because the Kahoot's too hard.
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My sincere apologies! My intent was not to avoid fault. Our team regularly does school visits. We've learned from students that bots get used because some feel they can never win. I don't point this out to blame teachers. But, hopefully, understanding why bots are appealing can help us all brainstorm things we can do to make bots less appealing. One idea I tried to suggest was to use Team Mode.
We are regularly identifying new bots and updating our platform to prevent them from working. If you believe bots were used to flood a game you hosted, please follow the advice posted here.
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Just found 2 extensions and an app for making bots on Kahoot on the Chrome Web Store. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/kahoot%20bots?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher
The names and their type are as follows:
- Kahoot Smasher Beta (Extension)
- Kahoot Smasher Pro (Extension)
- Kahoot!: Hacked Edition (App)
Can anyone from the K!rew report these items?
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Feature idea: add a screen that allows the teacher to input the number of participants before the game is run. Then limit the number of participants to that maximum. Students passed the link to the game could use it as a test review for themselves by simply entering 1 (or any non-zero integer, really) when they want to play review. 200 bots cannot create players if the limit is set to 18, for example.
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Bots are hard to stop since they use the same API as normal players do. There are some ways to stop them:
- Enable 2 factorings. Some bots don't brute force these and won't be able to get in.
- Name generator. Prevents very little bots that emulate a web browser from joining.
- Team mode. Many bots aren't built to join using teams yet, so this is a good solution.
If none of the above methods work, you could try using the "kahoot antibot" script (search google)
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I used to join so many Kahoot live streams and literally every single time there were people spamming hundreds of thousands of bots and making it crash and even scrambling the user's wifi and making the game pin disappear.
Most bots can be stopped with:
Anti-Bot script
Kahoot's 2 step join
Note: bots containing a ghost icon may be able to bypass these fixes like shown below in older Kahoot streams. The majority of "spam join" websites can however be prevented (bots not containing a ghost icon).
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