By using the internet and social networks in our daily lives, we make a lot of our information publicly available on the web without realizing it. Over the years, it has become increasingly common for us to record this information on our networks (such as our full name and the city we live in in our Instagram bio, for example).
While this normalization of data sharing has completely changed society, turning the internet into something useful and effective, it has also increased people’s exposure. And many criminals take advantage of this to carry out scams, using a method called web scraping.
Web scraping, also known as web data extraction, is the name given to the process of collecting structured data from the web in an automated way. In general, this method is used by people, companies and, worryingly, criminals, who want to use the vast amount of publicly available web data to make smarter decisions or commit crimes.
How data scraping is carried out
The basic scraping process is actually carried out on a daily basis by much of the world’s population, in the act of copying and pasting information from one site to another. The difference is that web scraping does this on a microscopic scale and with intelligent automation, to extract millions of data points from web pages.
Web scraping is carried out using two tools: a web crawler and a web scraper.
Is web scraping illegal?
No. Collecting data that is public and accessible to any internet user is not considered illegal. Therefore, the automation of large-scale data collection using artificial intelligence does not infringe the law either.
However, especially after the LGPD, the collection and transaction of personal data is restricted to the prior authorization of the data subject.
For example, social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok consider the automated collection and copying of stored data to be a violation of the rules governing the use of their services.
Even so, there are many who copy data with malicious intent, such as collecting unauthorized information for misuse. Proof of this is the considerable increase in cyberattacks and data leaks in recent years.
What are the main applications of data scraping?
The main application of data scraping is to collect large amounts of public information automatically
However, there are several purposes to which this analysis can be applied. In this context, there are several applications that show how web scraping works and why it is worth adopting this practice in your company’s day-to-day operations:
1. transforming data into intelligent information to generate business insights
2. Clarify doubts quickly and accurately
3. Monitor market data
4. Qualify prospecting for new clients (B2B)
5. Assessing the reputation of a brand or product
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