Compensation For Data Leaks Under Art. 82 GDPR? The Current Legal Situation Regarding Data Scraping

The term "data scraping" has gained increased attention since the global data leaks of the Facebook service operated by Meta. The automated "scraping" of data, often carried out by bots, means the extensive extraction of publicly accessible data on platforms in order to analyse, process or sell the information obtained, for example. Compiling information that can be found publicly on the internet is not illegal as such and in many cases, it is even useful for better systematisation and meaningful use of information. Nothing else happens when search engines index website content on the Internet. However, scraping is only harmless if it concerns publicly accessible general data.

However, mass extraction can also include personal data of platform users or sensitive data from a company's customer database. If such data is disclosed because the necessary security precautions have gaps, web scraping can be used maliciously by third parties to exploit the security gaps to