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ARTICLE · 07 FEBRUARY 2011

Protect Your Business By Blocking Scraping

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Almost all online businesses with a large online presence and listings are targets of systematic data theft – commonly known as scraping,

United KingdomMedia, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment
Frank Jennings
Frank Jennings
John Yates
John Yates

This article was originally published on 1st May 2009

Almost all online businesses with a large online presence and listings are targets of systematic data theft – commonly known as scraping, Web harvesting or Web data extraction. During these attacks scrapers systematically steal large amounts of information from the company's web site, in clear breach of the terms and conditions, and use it for example to boost a competing business.

Data Scraping or Data Harvesting is theft of property from websites and has been going on as long as companies have been publishing data and images on the web. Today it is done on an industrial scale as some entities believe that it is easier to steal data than to create it. There dozens of commercially available packages that offer tools and anonymity to Scrape.

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