**The Battle Against AI Scrapers: Understanding Anubis**

As a user, you may have noticed that your favorite websites are occasionally unavailable or slow to load. This phenomenon is often caused by the scourge of AI companies scraping websites for data and information without permission. To combat this issue, website administrators have set up a system called Anubis, which uses a Proof-of-Work scheme to protect their servers from unwanted visitors.

**What is Anubis?**

Anubis is a measure designed to deter large-scale web scraping by making it more expensive and time-consuming for AI companies to scrape websites without permission. The system works by requiring users to complete a simple challenge, which involves solving a cryptographic puzzle that proves they are human. This challenge is presented on a page called "proof of work," which is intended to be a deterrent for legitimate users.

**How Does Anubis Work?**

The idea behind Anubis is to make the additional load required to scrape websites using AI tools negligible at individual scales, but significant enough when combined with other scrapers. This creates a form of economic pressure that discourages large-scale web scraping. However, some critics argue that this approach is not foolproof and may only delay the inevitable.

**The Catch**

Anubis requires users to enable JavaScript in their browser to complete the challenge and access the website. Unfortunately, plugins like JShelter, which aim to improve accessibility by disabling JavaScript, will not work with Anubis. This means that users who rely on these plugins or have concerns about JavaScript may be unable to access certain websites.

**The Purpose of Anubis**

Anubis is often seen as a placeholder solution, designed to buy time for website administrators to develop more robust solutions to the problem of web scraping. The real goal is to create systems that can fingerprint and identify headless browsers (such as those used by AI companies) and challenge them in a way that legitimate users cannot.

**Conclusion**

The rise of Anubis highlights the ongoing struggle between website administrators and AI companies who seek to scrape websites for data and information without permission. While this system is not perfect, it represents an important effort to protect websites from unwanted visitors and ensure that resources are available only to those who need them.