PenFed's site denies access; an application page serves the routing number

An AI agent ran five ordinary deposits tasks on the public pages of PenFed Credit Union and scored what each page delivered.

Run 6 August 2026 · five tasks · public pages, logged out · Credit union

26/100

Mystery Agent score
Deposits · rank 23 of 25

Savings rate

12Automated reader declined

Checking comparison

12Automated reader declined

Fee schedule

10Automated reader declined

Routing number

58Automated reader declined

Application page

40Automated reader declined

Summary

PenFed's access denial pages are small, clean, and state plainly that the request was refused rather than returning a misleading blank response.
A separate application subdomain, reachable outside the main site's block, serves the routing number, 256078446, as plain text inside its page data.
Allowing standard, low-volume requests to reach PenFed's rate, fee, and routing pages would let its published facts reach automated readers directly.

PenFed Credit Union also appears in the Credit Cards study, where it scores 13 and ranks 25 of 25. See that scorecard.

Task by task

Each task is scored out of 100 on completion, answer quality and how directly the answer was reached. Each note describes what the page delivered, with a link to the page the answer was found on.

Task 01Savings rateAutomated reader declined12 out of 100

An automated reader requested the homepage and a savings page and received an Access Denied response from the edge network on both, with no rate figure of any kind appearing in either response.

Task 02Checking comparisonAutomated reader declined12 out of 100

Requesting two guessed checking product pages, an automated reader received matching Access Denied responses under 420 bytes each from the edge network, with no fee, waiver, or comparison content served in either case.

Task 03Fee scheduleAutomated reader declined10 out of 100

The guessed fee schedule URL returned the identical fallback response served for every other path tested, leaving the automated reader with an access denial notice rather than schedule figures in this run.

Task 04Routing numberAutomated reader declined58 out of 100

The main site's routing number page returned an Access Denied response, but a separate application subdomain served the number as plain text: Pentagon Federal Credit Union Routing # 256078446, inside its page data alongside a dated rate disclaimer.

Task 05Application pageAutomated reader declined40 out of 100

The main site's checking page returned only an Access Denied notice, but the separate application subdomain describes verifying identity with a name, address, and Social Security number, and funding the account right away, all in plain page text.

Experience the benefits of Penfed! We will open a membership account for you upon approval.

The application page

What the account opening page states to a reader that runs no scripts.

410Bytes delivered

238Characters of visible text

0Form fields in the first response

After scripts runWhat an applicant needs

Strengths and opportunities

What is working

PenFed maintains a consistent, predictable edge security policy across its entire public domain, which is a real operational strength even though it kept this agent out.
The deny pages PenFed does serve are clean, small, and honest about the block: they state plainly that access was refused rather than returning a misleading blank 200 or a silent redirect loop, which makes the boundary easy for any client to recognize and log correctly.

Opportunities

Publishing an llms.txt file that agents can actually fetch would let PenFed hand rates, fees, and routing numbers to automated readers on its own terms, rather than leaving the entire experience gated behind bot detection.
Allowing standard, low-volume GET requests to public marketing and disclosure pages (rate pages, fee schedules, routing number pages) would let PenFed's own published facts reach agent-mediated research without any change to its authentication or account-opening security.
A fee schedule PDF delivered without the same edge restriction would be a low-risk, high-value publishing decision, since that document is already meant for public distribution.

Access

The edge policy declined the automated reader on some paths, and that response is recorded as delivered. Publishing an llms.txt file would give agent traffic a documented entry point.

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