What is scraping and why should you bother?

The growing phenomenon of systematic data theft known as “scraping” is definitely something to be taken seriously by online businesses who maintain large public databases on their web sites. As you read this article you will learn more about why scraping can be a serious threat to your company.

Scraping defined

Scraping (also web scraping, screen scraping or data scraping) is what you do when you copy large amounts of data from a web site – manually or with a script or program.

Scraping can sometimes be benevolent and totally acceptable like for example the search engine robots that index the web. You definitely want those to spider your site so that your customers can find you! On this web site however we will focus on malicious scraping which is carried out for commercial gain – and how to prevent it.

Malicious scraping

Malicious scraping is systematic theft of intellectual property in the form of data accessible on a web site. Let's illustrate this further with an example:

An online directory publishes its intellectual property – for example names, addresses and business listings – on their web site. This information is free for all to use as long as they comply with the terms and conditions of the site. That’s all good until someone – a scraper – decides to abuse the service and start systematically downloading large amounts of data for personal gain.

Because of the scraping the directory totally looses control over its data which they have invested time and money to gather, maintain and make available as a part of their service offering.

Why web scraping hurts your business

Imagine this: a scraper downloads all the data from your database and adds it to a competing site. Suddenly you have competition from a company that offers exactly the same services as you do – including whatever services they offered before.

Adding insult to injury the scraper company had next to no costs whatsoever for gathering the material which means that after scraping your site they can not only offer a better service than you. They can also do it at a lower price.

With this in mind, it’s not hard to imagine how out of control scraping attacks at your web site seriously can harm your business.

Who's threatened by scraping?

All online businesses that share information on their websites as a part of their business model are threatened by scraping. Examples of these include (click the links to learn more about the specific businesses):

Is my company in the danger zone?

Are you unsure whether your company may be the target of systematic scraping attacks? Contact Sentor, a leading expert on scraping risk assessment and scraping prevention. Click here for contact information.