Newly added embedded data not recorded for some participants

Hi all,

I’m a graduate researcher managing one of my lab’s surveys, and long story short is we have been struggling with bots. Ive implemented a number of measures to try to deal with them, like fraud scores, duplicate id detection, and a number of response comparisons that rely on embedded data. I am noticing that as I’m adding more embedded data points, they are showing up in responses for some participants, but not for others. I have a number of “participants” that will have all the embedded data points that I had added say… last week, but the ones I add today will remain blank. Ive had my research team take the survey to confirm that the embedded data is logging correctly for them, and all seems to be recording correctly.

so I guess my questions are

1. is it possible for a bot to modify how embedded data shows up in the data table?
2. is it possible for them to submit responses without triggering certain aspects of the survey flow?
3. is there any other explanation for this, like embedded data not working for certain browsers, devices, etc.

Thanks all, I’m absolutely pulling my hair out over this, so any input or strategies that have worked for y’all in the past would be greatly appreciated!