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Allow Monitoring Your Tracking

Why am I receiving "Website Inaccessible" alerts?

DATA Reshape automatically monitors your site every few minutes to verify that your tracking setup is installed and functioning correctly.

If your site uses a firewall, WAF (Web Application Firewall), or bot protection service, the monitor may be blocked before it can verify your tracking. When this happens, you will receive alerts such as:

  • Website Inaccessible — the monitor received a non-200 response or a timeout
  • Cloudflare Challenge Blocking — the monitor received a Cloudflare challenge/CAPTCHA page instead of your actual site

These alerts do not mean your tracking is broken — they mean the monitor cannot reach your site to verify it.

How to identify the DATA Reshape monitor

Every monitoring request includes the following identifiers:

Custom HTTP header

Every request includes the header:

x-dre-monitor

The value of this header may vary (e.g. basic, advanced) and can change over time. Your firewall rule should match on the header name only, not on a specific value. This ensures it continues to work regardless of future changes.

User-Agent

The User-Agent string always contains (DATA Reshape). Examples:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 ... Chrome/145.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (DATA Reshape)
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_7 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 ... Safari/604.1 (DATA Reshape)

No fixed IP address

The monitor runs on distributed cloud infrastructure. IP addresses may change at any time, so IP-based whitelisting is not recommended.

General instructions (any firewall)

Regardless of which firewall or WAF provider you use, the steps are the same:

  1. Create a rule that matches requests containing the header x-dre-monitor (match on header name, not value)
  2. Set the action to allow/skip/bypass bot protection for matching requests
  3. Place the rule above (higher priority than) any blocking rules
  4. Deploy and verify — the DATA Reshape alerts should resolve automatically within a few minutes

If your firewall does not support matching on custom headers, use the User-Agent string instead — match requests where the User-Agent contains (DATA Reshape).

tip

The custom header method (x-dre-monitor) is preferred because User-Agent strings are easily spoofed, while custom headers are harder to guess.


Cloudflare

Cloudflare is the most common case where the DATA Reshape monitor gets blocked, especially when Bot Fight Mode or Super Bot Fight Mode is enabled.

1. Log in to the Cloudflare Dashboard and select your domain.

2. Go to SecurityWAFCustom rules.

3. Click Create rule.

4. Configure:

  • Rule name: Allow DATA Reshape Monitor
  • Field: Header
  • Operator: exists
  • Value: x-dre-monitor
  • Action: Skip → select All remaining custom rules, Bot Fight Mode, and Super Bot Fight Mode

5. Drag the rule to position 1 (highest priority).

6. Click Deploy.

Alternative: Expression Editor

If you prefer the expression editor, use:

(len(http.request.headers["x-dre-monitor"]) > 0)

Action: Skip → All remaining custom rules, Bot Fight Mode, Super Bot Fight Mode.

Verifying it works

After deploying, check SecurityEvents in the Cloudflare Dashboard. You should see requests with the x-dre-monitor header being skipped instead of challenged. The DATA Reshape alert will resolve automatically at the next check cycle.


Sucuri

1. Log in to the Sucuri Dashboard and select your site.

2. Go to Access ControlHeader Allow.

3. Add a rule to allow requests that contain the header x-dre-monitor.

If header-based rules are not available on your plan, go to Access ControlUser-Agent Allow and add DATA Reshape as an allowed User-Agent string.


Akamai

1. In the Akamai Control Center, open your Security Configuration.

2. Go to Custom Rules or Rate Controls.

3. Create an exception rule:

  • Match condition: Request header x-dre-monitor is present
  • Action: Allow

4. Place the rule above any bot mitigation or rate limiting rules.

5. Activate the configuration.


AWS WAF (CloudFront)

1. In the AWS Console, go to WAF & ShieldWeb ACLs.

2. Select your Web ACL.

3. Add a new rule with priority above your blocking rules:

  • Rule type: Regular rule
  • Match condition: Header x-dre-monitor is present
  • Action: Allow

4. Save and deploy.


Other providers

For any firewall or bot protection not listed above, the principle is the same:

  1. Find the section for custom rules, exceptions, or whitelisting
  2. Create a rule matching requests that contain the header x-dre-monitor
  3. Set the action to allow/bypass
  4. Ensure it has higher priority than blocking rules

If you need help with a specific provider, contact us at [email protected].

FAQ

Will this weaken my site's security?

No. The rule only bypasses bot protection for requests containing the x-dre-monitor header. All other traffic remains fully protected.

Why not whitelist by IP address?

The DATA Reshape monitor runs on distributed cloud infrastructure (Cloudflare Workers). Source IP addresses are shared and may change without notice. Header-based identification is reliable and does not require maintenance.

What happens if I don't add the rule?

The monitor will continue to be blocked, and you will keep receiving "Website Inaccessible" or "Cloudflare Challenge Blocking" alerts. Your tracking will still work normally for real visitors — only the automated monitoring check is affected.

How do I know the rule is working?

After adding the rule, any active "Website Inaccessible" alert from DATA Reshape will automatically resolve within a few minutes (at the next monitoring cycle). You can also check your firewall's request logs for the x-dre-monitor header.