Patreon Defends Users Against ATO, Scraping, & DDoS Attacks With DataDome

93% reduction

in accounts impacted by ATO

Complete stop

to aggressive scraping

Early identification

of DDoS attacks

Account Takeover DDoS Media & entertainment Scraping

Patreon powers membership businesses for creators by giving them the tools they need to acquire, manage, and energize their paying patrons. With a subscription-style payment model, fans pay their favorite creators a monthly amount of their choice in exchange for exclusive access, extra content, or a closer look into their creative journey. Patreon put an end to DDoS attacks and aggressive scraping and protected its users from account takeover (ATO) by implementing DataDome’s online fraud and bot management solution.

By partnering with DataDome, we’re living up to our values in the best way possible. We’re able to better defend our creators’ ability to make decisions about their creative works and to benefit from a more secure and stable platform.

Security Team for Patreon

The Problem: Protecting Creators & Patrons From ATO, Scraping, & DDoS Attacks

Patreon was founded by a creator for creators with one goal in mind—to get creators paid. So, when bad actors began targeting Patreon with ATO, DDoS, and scraping attacks, the critical priority was to protect the 250k+ creators and 8 million+ patrons who use the platform.

ATO (Account Takeover) Attacks

“When Patreon users get targeted with ATO attacks, that prevents us from achieving our mission to get creators paid,” explains the Security Team for Patreon. “It’s important to us that the platform is safe for the creators and patrons who use it.”

Scraping Surges

“We have some malicious scrapers that have invested a lot of time and money into efforts to steal content from our creators,” Patreon’s Security Team reports, “It’s important that we have high confidence with bot detection to help us identify aggressive scraping behaviors. DataDome has made a world of difference in our ability to do that, and to provide enough distinction between scrapers to enable us to respond accordingly.”

DDoS Delays

“DDoS attacks are fairly common, and we have defenses in place to respond accordingly,” details Patreon’s Security Team. “However, we’ve determined that there is some delay in those protections on the order of several minutes.”

The Solution: Quick, Responsive, & Scalable Detection With Strong Support

“Prior to DataDome, it took a great deal of time, labor, and resources to detect and respond to these types of attack,” the Security Team for Patreon writes. “ DataDome’s partnership has strengthened our defenses, allowing the team to tackle other important priorities.”

The Results: Savings in Time, Labor, & Resources

The results of implementing DataDome’s solution are best summarized by Patreon’s Security Team:

ATO Abated

“As we rapidly grow and globalize as a company, our defenses against such attacks have to grow accordingly, and that’s where DataDome came in. We have many defensive layers recording statistics for us, and since implementing DataDome, we’ve seen a 93% reduction in the number of accounts that have been taken over in ATO attacks.”

A Stop to Scraping

“Since turning on DataDome, we’ve been able to completely stop several aggressive scrapers. DataDome’s researchers have been critical in profiling and adapting to new techniques being used against us.”

“With each pattern submitted, we’ve received quick, thoughtful responses. The fact that submitting patterns to be checked for possible ‘false negatives’ takes a single click in the interface means that our team can focus more time on other challenges and initiatives. All the details are sent to support without us having to spend the time to type a long message or copy and paste anything.”

DDoS Defense Reinforced

“Having DataDome in place has made a world of difference as a supplemental defensive layer, helping us identify DDoS attacks in the very early stages.”

Thanks to DataDome, we’re able to embody and achieve Patreon’s core values (put creators first, build with craft, make it happen, and win together) and support our mission to get creators paid.

Security Team for Patreon

“DataDome has shown that they are building their product with craft. The dashboard has a very instinctual interface and is not filled with a lot of noise. The introduction of DataDome added minimal network latency to the user experience. We’ve not had one complaint from anyone about the performance of the platform. DataDome’s sales engagement team is patient, knowledgeable, and flexible in collaborating to ensure our needs have been met. The launch was heavily supported by them as well; going above and beyond to ensure we launched successfully with minimal disruption.”