Additionally, the report claims that Perplexity uses rotating IP addresses and changes its autonomous system networks (ASN) to sidestep IP-based blocking measures. Cloudflare stated that this “stealth crawling” occurred across tens of thousands of domains and millions of requests per day.
Pattern of Disregarding Web Protocols
This isn’t the first time Perplexity has faced scrutiny over its data collection practices. Last year, the company was caught bypassing paywalls and ignoring robots.txt files, actions which CEO Aravind Srinivas attributed to third-party crawlers.
However, Cloudflare’s direct testing contradicts this claim, suggesting that Perplexity is actively engaged in circumventing protections rather than being misrepresented by third-party services.
“This activity was observed across tens of thousands of domains,” Cloudflare wrote. “It’s not a mistake — it’s a pattern.”
Perplexity Responds: “Publicity Stunt”
In response to the report, Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer dismissed the allegations as a “publicity stunt” and claimed the Cloudflare blog post contained “a lot of misunderstandings.”
