For logistics and delivery companies, uptime is not a luxury — it is the product.

Customers expect to track packages in real time, partners rely on stable APIs, and internal systems depend on predictable traffic patterns. When automated traffic spirals out of control, the impact is immediate and visible.

This was the challenge faced by a regional logistics company operating multiple public-facing websites and shipment tracking APIs. With thousands of daily deliveries and a rapidly growing digital footprint, the company found itself under constant pressure from automated traffic.

They turned to SafeLine WAF to regain control.

When Tracking Systems Became a Target

The company’s tracking portal was designed for simplicity. Customers entered a tracking number and instantly received shipment status. The same data was also available through public APIs for partners and mobile applications.

Over time, traffic patterns began to change.

• Tracking API requests increased sharply
• Server load spiked during non-business hours
• Response times became inconsistent
• Infrastructure costs rose month over month

Yet customer activity did not grow at the same rate.

Further analysis revealed the cause: automated bots were aggressively querying tracking endpoints.

Some were scraping shipment data. Others were probing APIs for undocumented behavior. A few were replaying legitimate requests at scale.

Why Logistics Platforms Attract Bots

Unlike many consumer websites, logistics platforms expose high-value, real-time data:

• Shipment status
• Delivery routes
• Estimated arrival times
• Partner integration endpoints

This makes them attractive targets for:

• Data scraping operations
• Competitive intelligence
• Credential stuffing and enumeration
• Replay-based abuse of tracking APIs

Traditional protections proved insufficient.

Initial Defenses and Their Limitations

The company tried common mitigations:

• Rate limiting tracking endpoints
• Blocking high-volume IP addresses
• Adding verification challenges to web pages

Each came with trade-offs.

Rate limits disrupted legitimate partner integrations. IP blocking failed due to distributed bot networks. Verification challenges risked frustrating real customers trying to track packages on mobile devices.

The security team needed a solution that could protect APIs and web traffic without interfering with customer experience.

Deploying SafeLine WAF in Front of Web and API Traffic

SafeLine WAF was deployed as a reverse proxy in front of both web applications and API gateways.

This allowed the company to apply consistent bot protection across:

• Public tracking pages
• Partner APIs
• Mobile application traffic

Deployment required no changes to backend systems, which was critical for a production logistics environment.

Dynamic Protection: Making Scraping Economically Unviable

The first major improvement came from enabling Dynamic Protection.

SafeLine dynamically transformed and encrypted HTML and JavaScript before sending responses to clients. While customers saw no difference, bots encountered constantly changing structures.

This had an immediate impact:

• Scraping scripts failed to parse tracking pages reliably
• Automated tools could not reuse JavaScript logic
• Reverse engineering the front-end became costly and unstable

Instead of blocking bots outright, SafeLine increased the cost of automation — enough to discourage large-scale scraping.

Human Verification: Filtering Traffic Without Disrupting Customers

Dynamic protection reduced scraping, but API abuse continued.

To address this, the company enabled Human Verification for web traffic and selectively for sensitive APIs.

SafeLine evaluated each client based on behavioral signals, including:

• Browser authenticity
• IP behavior history
• Signs of automation or instrumentation
• Interaction patterns consistent with real users

Most importantly, verification was largely invisible to legitimate customers.

Real users could track shipments without interruption. Automated tools were filtered out before reaching backend systems.

Stopping Replay Attacks on Tracking APIs

One of the most damaging attack patterns involved HTTP request replay.

Attackers captured legitimate tracking API requests and replayed them thousands of times, consuming backend resources and extracting shipment data.

SafeLine’s Request Anti-Replay feature solved this problem.

After passing verification, each client received a one-time validation token. Tokens were rotated on every request and invalidated immediately after use.

When replay attempts occurred:

• Requests were blocked automatically
• Sessions were revoked
• Backend systems were protected without manual intervention

Business Impact After SafeLine Deployment

Within weeks of deploying SafeLine WAF, the logistics company observed clear improvements:

• Tracking API abuse dropped significantly
• Backend system stability improved
• Infrastructure costs stabilized
• Customer complaints related to tracking delays decreased

Operational teams reported fewer incidents and less reactive troubleshooting.

Why SafeLine Was a Good Fit for Logistics Systems

Logistics platforms face unique challenges:

• High-volume, real-time APIs
• Strict availability requirements
• Diverse client types (web, mobile, partners)
• Zero tolerance for user friction

SafeLine’s layered bot protection addressed these needs by combining:

• Dynamic Protection to disrupt scraping
• Human Verification to distinguish legitimate users
• Request Anti-Replay to ensure request integrity

This approach allowed the company to protect critical systems without compromising customer experience.

Lessons for Other Logistics and Delivery Companies

Automated abuse is no longer limited to attacks. In logistics, it often appears as “normal traffic” — until systems degrade.

This case demonstrates that effective bot protection does not require heavy-handed controls or constant tuning.

By deploying SafeLine WAF as a reverse proxy, the company turned bot defense into a stable, scalable part of its infrastructure.

Final Thoughts

For delivery and logistics companies, trust is built on reliability.

SafeLine WAF helped this organization maintain service quality, protect sensitive data, and reduce operational risk — all while keeping tracking systems fast and accessible for real customers.

In an industry where every request matters, that balance is critical.