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The Ubiquity and Danger of Web Scraping

  • The Ubiquity and Danger of Web Scraping-

    Research and Data Collection 

    Twenty-six percent use web scraping for research.

    Companies hire web scrapers to gather research on listening services that monitor consumer opinions about products and companies. Companies also use web scraping bots for mass data collection for various projects. For example, users can get marketing intelligence by using bots to identify key market developments from various sources on the web.

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The Ubiquity and Danger of Web Scraping

  • 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
  • The Ubiquity and Danger of Web Scraping-3

    Research and Data Collection 

    Twenty-six percent use web scraping for research.

    Companies hire web scrapers to gather research on listening services that monitor consumer opinions about products and companies. Companies also use web scraping bots for mass data collection for various projects. For example, users can get marketing intelligence by using bots to identify key market developments from various sources on the web.

Web scraping is a software method used to extract information from websites. It often includes transforming unstructured website data into a database for analysis, or repurposing stolen content for the scraper's own online operations. Not only does web scraping pose a critical challenge to company branding, it can also threaten sales and conversions, lower SEO rankings or undermine the integrity of content that took considerable time and resources to produce.

Through analysis of top web scraping platforms and services, Distil Networks' 2016 Economics of Web Scraping Report uncovers the ubiquity and danger of this practice. The following findings outline how the democratization of web scraping lets perpetrators effortlessly steal sensitive information on the web.