Anyone who operates a website has a responsibility to make and keep it safe. Web scraping may be a danger that must be dealt with.

Every day, millions of people go to websites on the internet. Some people turn to websites for news and other types of information. Some people turn to websites to help them do their work or to buy things they need. When people head to a website they have certain expectations.

Most people realize websites collect information from their site visitors. Some of the methods for collecting data are obvious in that visitors are asked to provide it. This can often be general information, but it can also be information that people consider to be private.

There are times when information is collected without the knowledge of its visitors or the site owner. This is often collected with this technique. The question is, when does it cross the line? Is there a point where web scraping turns from collecting simple information into something that may be considered an illegal activity?

Legitimate Purposes for Scraping

There may be times when a business turns to web scraping to collect information about the type of visitor they get to their website. Or they may want to get information about the type of people that visit similar websites. This type of information can be used to help them improve their website for anyone that visits.

There are many websites that do not allow this form of copying. They may not think that the legitimate purposes outweigh the dangers this practice can cause. Some websites that allow scraping will include a disclaimer to let visitors know that this practice might occur. It is up to the visitor to a website to determine if site copying is an issue and how they want to deal with it.

Illegitimate Uses

When it comes to uses for web scraping that are not so honest, the list gets a lot longer. There is information to be collected from websites that a dishonest person can use. Even data that may seem harmless can become very dangerous. That is why many websites work to prevent a webpage from getting scraped with ScrapeSentry.

Some of the information that puts people at risk include:

• Account numbers. These are often collected and can be used for many different purposes

• Passwords. Many people use a single password for all of the websites they use. If a web scraping program can learn a password, it might open up many other sites to a hacker.

• Email addresses and other personal information. If hackers get their hands on an email address, it might be used to infect many computers. This is one piece of information that people often give out without thinking.

The ability to use the information that is collected by websites makes it vital that people are protected from web scraping.

Is Web Scraping Illegal?

The question that many people ask is if web scraping is legal? The answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. Because there are both legitimate and illegitimate uses for this software, it is not always easy to tell.

Website owners may try to protect themselves by disclosing their use of web scraping, but that may not always protect them. There are plenty of documented court cases that show how web scraping has, sometimes, turn into a felony offense. It is also not clear who is responsible for the illegal activity that may occur from web scraping. It could be the fault of the web site owner, the user of the web site, or some third party that has used software to get information from other people or other business website.

Author Bio
Peter is a big gadget lover who loves to share his views on security technologies like PC security, data protection etc.