'Scrapers' Dig Deep For Data On Web 158
srwellman writes "The practice of Web 'scraping' is growing as many firms offer to collect personal, and potentially incriminating, data about users from their social networking profiles and discussions. Many companies even collect online conversations and personal details from social networks, job sites and forums where people might discuss their lives and even potentially sensitive data, such as health issues. These scrapers operate in a legal grey area leaving many users exposed." We ban scrapers like this regularly here simply for not adhering to the rules spelled out in robots.txt.
Like Google? (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean like Google already does for its advertisers? In fact, one of the related links in the article is a story about Google titled Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead [wsj.com], discussing their plans for utilizing their vast archive of valuable user data. The battle for online privacy was lost long ago.
Re:"We (/.) ban scrapers..." LOL (Score:2, Interesting)
Humans do not make 100 requests in a 10 second timespan, nor do humans traverse every post made by every user..
That's what I use a Greasemonkey script for, you insensitive clod!