diff --git a/crawler.js b/crawler.js
index de7f49a3..096255b0 100644
--- a/crawler.js
+++ b/crawler.js
@@ -103,7 +103,7 @@ class Crawler {
       }
     }
   }
-
+  
   bootstrap() {
     let opts = {};
     if (this.params.logging.includes("pywb")) {
@@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ class Crawler {
     }
 
     this.configureUA();
-
+    
     this.headers = {"User-Agent": this.userAgent};
 
     child_process.spawn("redis-server", {...opts, cwd: "/tmp/"});
@@ -304,7 +304,13 @@ class Crawler {
       //argv.scope = url.href.slice(0, url.href.lastIndexOf("/") + 1);
       argv.scope = [new RegExp("^" + this.rxEscape(argv.url.slice(0, argv.url.lastIndexOf("/") + 1)))];
     }
-
+    
+    
+    // Check that the collection name is valid.
+    if (argv.collection.search(/^[\w][\w-]*$/) === -1){
+      throw new Error(`\n${argv.collection} is an invalid collection name. Please supply a collection name only using alphanumeric characters and the following characters [_ - ]\n`);
+    }
+  
     argv.timeout *= 1000;
 
     // waitUntil condition must be: load, domcontentloaded, networkidle0, networkidle2
diff --git a/tests/collection_name.test.js b/tests/collection_name.test.js
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..1711e44e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/collection_name.test.js
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+const util = require("util");
+const exec = util.promisify(require("child_process").exec);
+
+test("check that the collection name is properly validation", async () => {
+  jest.setTimeout(30000);
+  let passed = "";
+
+  try{
+    const data = await exec("docker-compose run crawler crawl --url http://www.example.com/ --collection valid_collection-nameisvalid");
+    if (data.stdout.includes("Waiting 5s to ensure WARCs are finished")){
+      passed = true;
+    }
+    else{
+      passed = false;
+    }
+  }
+  catch (error) {
+    passed = false;
+  }
+  expect(passed).toBe(true);
+});
+
+
+test("check that the collection name is not accepted if it doesn't meets our standards", async () => {
+  jest.setTimeout(30000);
+  let passed = "";
+
+  try{
+    await exec("docker-compose run crawler crawl --url http://www.example.com/ --collection invalid_c!!ollection-nameisvalid");
+    passed = true;
+  }
+  catch(e){
+    passed = false;
+  }
+  expect(passed).toBe(false);
+
+});