Web Scraping Ethics
Ethics in Web Scraping – Towards Data Science
We all scrape web data. Well, those of us who work with data do. Data scientists, marketers, data journalists, and the data curious alike. Lately, I’ve been thinking more about the ethics of the practice and have been dissatisfied by the lack of consensus on the me be clear that I’m talking ethics not the law. The law in regards to scraping web data is complex, fuzzy and ripe for reform, but that’s another matter. It’s not that no one is thinking, or writing, about the ethics in scraping but rather that both those scraping and those being scraped can’t agree on basic principles. I’ve been on both sides. I scape data mostly for personal projects, but I’ve employed it as a form of data collection on the job as well. On the other side, I’ve wrestled over how to filter out “bots” from my own or my employer’s web logs and analytics in order to focus on real customers. It’s been a reality of life for years now, and rather than fighting it let’s just set some ground I have no illusion that these rules are complete and absolute, they cover the key points of contention I’ve come across over the years. I, the web scraper will live by the following principles:If you have a public API that provides the data I’m looking for, I’ll use it and avoid scraping all together. I will always provide a User Agent string that makes my intentions clear and provides a way for you to contact me with questions or concerns. I will request data at a reasonable rate. I will strive to never be confused for a DDoS attack. I will only save the data I absolutely need from your page. If all I need it OpenGraph meta-data, that’s all I’ll keep. I will respect any content I do keep. I’ll never pass it off as my own. I will look for ways to return value to you. Maybe I can drive some (real) traffic to your site or credit you in an article or post. I will respond in a timely fashion to your outreach and work with you towards a resolution. I will scrape for the purpose of creating new value from the data, not to duplicate it. I, the site owner will live by the following principles:I will allow ethical scrapers to access my site as long as they are not a burden on my site’s performance. I will respect transparent User Agent strings rather than blocking them and encouraging use of scrapers masked as human visitors. I will reach out to the owner of the scraper (thanks to their ethical User Agent string) before blocking permanently. A temporary block is acceptable in the case of site performance or ethical concerns. I understand that scrapers are a reality of the open web. I will consider public APIs to provide data as an alternative to ease of scraping in PythonThe fact is, scraping data is easy. With a few lines of Python and the help of some awesome libraries such as urllib2 (or Requests if you prefer) and BeautifulSoup you can grab and parse the HTML of a page. It’s so easy in fact, that responsible use is more important than course, scraping a few thousand blog posts for a weekend project isn’t the problem. Heck, even scraping for use in business can be done quite ethically in my opinion. It’s high volume web scraping for questionable commercial use that gets the most attention and poses the highest risk for those of us who rely on the vast data of the web to innovate, learn and create new a little respect we can keep a good thing going.
The Ethics of Data Scraping – PromptCloud
What is Data Scraping Good for? 1. It can be used for Data Analysis and Visualisation2. Helps in Research and Development3. Can be employed in Market Analysis and Price ComparisonMisuse of Data Scraping Technology1. Might Encourage Plagiarism2. Used for Spamming3. Can be used for Identity TheftData Scraping EthicsConclusion
With the advanced data scraping technologies in place, data scraping is automated on a large scale today. Businesses are harvesting their power to drive innovation and derive better business decisions. But the bigger question remains, is data scraping an ethical concept? There are good and bad aspects to every technology. The same can be said about web scraping ethics. Let’s look at the beneficial aspects first.
What is Data Scraping Good for?
Here are some of the best things about how ethically scraping data can be useful.
1. It can be used for Data Analysis and Visualisation
Data analysis is something that has relevance in every field or industry. Be it E-commerce, finance, IT or even.
Data analysis is relevant in almost every field or industry. Be it eCommerce, Finance, IT or even Healthcare, data analysis can prove vital everywhere. It can be the backbone of every business decision. Quality and quantity data are the essential fuel that drives every analysis and data visualization process.
When it comes to data analysis, data from multiple sources is essential. This kind of data especially requires a higher level of technical skills to collect, clean up and organize. Data scrapers are an essential component of business analysis now that more companies have grown their roots into the internet.
2. Helps in Research and Development
Consumers have an endless demand for better, faster and innovative products. The development of better products has to start from research. A lot of research will go into recognizing trends, demand and problems with current products available in the market before companies can think about developing them into better ones.
Research is an indispensable factor in product development and innovation. And this research needs enormous amounts of data to be realised. Website scraping has been helping a lot in the improvement of our present-day electronic gadgets. Hence, research and development is going to be pointless without data mining.
3. Can be employed in Market Analysis and Price Comparison
Businesses are always in need of data. Data helps in shaping a great business strategy, no matter how small your company is. Market analysis is how companies learn how to rise above the competition while providing value to the customers. Along with this, price comparison can also be carried out using data scraped from the competitor’s websites. Both of these can help businesses in improving their profits by a large margin.
Misuse of Data Scraping Technology
Like we discussed earlier, everything about technology has its dark side. The same applies to scraping the web. Web scrapping can be used for unethical or even illegal activities. This doesn’t mean data scraping itself is a wrong practice. Here are some of the possible misuses of data scraping technology.
1. Might Encourage Plagiarism
Data scrapers let you collect content in any form from all over the internet in one place. It’s not wrong to collect content, but reproducing it anywhere without permission from its creators is absolutely wrong. Plagiarism is basically copying someone else’s copyrighted work and republishing it as your own.
This is not only unethical but illegal as well by the digital millennium copyright act. If a person or company employs scraping solutions to collect data from various sources and publishes it as their own, this can incur a monetary loss for the affected parties. This is an unethical practice where data scraping is involved.
2. Used for Spamming
Spamming can be termed as one of the most annoying things we have ever come across on the internet. Nobody wants to receive unrelated emails or calls promoting some product or service. Many spammers use web data scraping for collecting email IDs and mobile numbers. They further use the collected contact details to send ads and promotional emails. Scraping data is the easiest way to harvest huge lists of contact details from the web, though unethical.
3. Can be used for Identity Theft
Social media profiles and data in them can be scraped using data scraping techniques. People with malicious intentions can do this for identity theft and similar illegal acts. Crawling data for emails, mobile numbers and personal info with the intention of scamming people by identity theft is a rising menace. Unfortunately, data scraping can be employed to carry out such scams.
Data Scraping Ethics
Web data scraping is a mechanism to make a computer visit a website automatically and collect some data in the process. Technically, there’s no difference between a computer visiting a website on its own and a human using a computer to visit the website. Besides, data scraping can have positive effects on all parties involved if done the right way. However, there are a few rules to follow.
You should always read a site’s Terms of use before attempting website crawling. Some websites might not want you to crawl and extract their data and would indicate this in their You will have to abide by these if you want to play it cool. As long as you follow them, you are doing nothing unethical. Remember, Google is an ethical web scraping engine that every website likes to get crawled by.
Conclusion
Data scraping is a brilliant technology that has the potential to help you make the best business strategies ever tried. With great power comes great responsibility and hence it should be used for the good alone. Data scraping is ethical as long as the scraping bot respects all the rules set by the websites and the scraped data is used with good intentions. If you want to know more about the technical and legal aspects of data scraping.
A Guide to Ethical Web Scraping – Empirical Data Strategies
Web scraping is not new. In fact, the whole Internet is based on it. Google and Bing run solely on web scraping to show your search results. Every time you share a link to a YouTube video on Facebook, the data around it gets scraped so people can see the video’s thumbnail in your post. The list goes on, and the potential for data scraping seems endless.
We can find many ways to use data scraping for everybody’s benefit. The problem is that, sometimes, the ethical aspects involved in the process of, say, scraping people’s health records, can be a bit blurry.
Think about it this way: When you apply for a health insurance plan, your provider will need to ask you for personal information, which you’ll gladly give them in exchange for the service they provide. Now, when some stranger does some web scraping magic with your data and uses it for whatever purpose they think is appropriate, things start getting more inappropriate
Even if you signed a contract with your insurance company that allows them to give strangers access to your information, and even if that stranger also signed a contract agreeing to use your data in a legal and morally correct way, you could still disagree with your provider and the scraper’s concept for “ethical use”.
That’s exactly why I decided the best way to illustrate this issue is by putting YOU to think from the perspective of whose data is being scraped. You should always put on those people’s shoes. After all, that nice 3D graph, data visualization or insightful report you’re putting with that information wouldn’t be possible to make without them.
Here are some good practices for ethical scraping:
The API way is often the best way
Some websites have their own APIs built specifically for you to gather data without having to scrape it. This means that you’d be doing it according to their rules; you have been authorized to get the information. So, if there’s an API, use it instead of scraping.
Respect the
Also known as Robots Exclusion Standard, the file is what indicates the web-crawling software where it is allowed (or not allowed) within the website. This is part of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) which are a group of web standards created as a way to regulate how robots crawl the web.
Read the Terms and Conditions
This is the main way the website owner tells you the rules. Yes, it’s easier to just click “I agree” or “I accept” and hope for the best. Remember they wrote those for a reason. They are talking to you, listen to what they have to say.
Be gentle
The process of scraping can be pretty harsh on the server, and aggressive scraping can sometimes lead to functionality issues, generating a bad user experience for human users. So, make a habit to do the scraping off-peak hours. And don’t forget to space out the requests so the website’s owner won’t confuse your scraping for a DDoS attack.
Identify yourself
The website’s administrator may notice some unusual traffic happening. Manners come first, so let them know who you are, your intentions, and how to contact you for more questions. You can do this by simply adding a User-Agent string with your information, so they will be able to see it. Is that simple.
Ask for permission
Some basic human courtesy is always appreciated. They have something that you want, be courteous and ask before assuming the information is free for you to take. Remember: the data doesn’t belong to you.
Value the content you keep
You should only take the kind of content that you need. And always have a good reason for getting the content in the first place. The purpose of using the data is to create more value, not duplicate it.
Treat the data with respect
You were given permission to take the content, but that doesn’t mean you can now grant that permission to others. Don’t pass it off as if it were your own.
Give back when you can
Look forward to giving back to the owner. Give them credit in an article or in social media, and try to drive some good traffic back to their website.
Practice Ethical Web Scraping
The need for data sources increases over time and many websites don’t have their own APIs for developers to access the data they want. This only means that web scraping practices will just grow over time and it is important for developers to know how to do it right.
As you can see, it is a matter of respect, good manners, and proper human relationships to keep your web scraping healthy and ethical.
Have a happy and guilt-free scraping!
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References
Densmore, J. (2017, July 23). Ethics in Web Scraping. Retrieved from Moz. (2019). Retrieved from Koshy, J. (2016, April 11). Is Data scraping an Ethical practice? Retrieved from Kansal, S. (2019, January 23). Advanced Python Web Scraping: Best Practices & Workarounds. Retrieved from ScrapeHero (2019, October 10). How to prevent getting blocked while scraping. Retrieved from
Frequently Asked Questions about web scraping ethics
Is Web scraping ethical?
Data scraping is ethical as long as the scraping bot respects all the rules set by the websites and the scraped data is used with good intentions. If you want to know more about the technical and legal aspects of data scraping.
How do you scrape ethically?
Here are some good practices for ethical scraping:The API way is often the best way. Some websites have their own APIs built specifically for you to gather data without having to scrape it. … Respect the robots. txt. … Read the Terms and Conditions. … Be gentle. … Identify yourself. … Ask for permission. … References.Dec 2, 2019
Can websites tell if your web scraping?
Websites can easily detect scrapers when they encounter repetitive and similar browsing behavior. Therefore, you need to apply different scraping patterns from time to time while extracting the data from the sites. Some sites have a really advanced anti-scraping mechanism.Jun 3, 2019
