Not many ordinary people have heard of web scraping, which is true of even those who frequently use the internet. It doesn’t get a great deal of media coverage, even though it has become clear to experts that even the most innocent devices are part of it.
It will surprise many to learn that even a simple drawing pad that connects to a computer to allow the user to draw images can actively gather your data. Little wonder, then, that so many are turning to proxy provider options to opt-out of this practice.
What is Web Scraping?
There are several ways in which our data is gathered for sale on the open market, and some of these have become quite well known. On the other hand, web scraping has somewhat managed to fly under the radar despite being a severe issue.
Web scraping uses bots to harvest a site, duplicating all the content and data from the target page. It “scrapes” right down to the HTML code and thus can copy all the underlying data as part of the process.
The information that is being scraped comes in a raw format. Thus, the important part of web scraping is data parsing where data is being transformed into a comprehensible and readable form. In reality the whole process is quite simple as one can use a data parser to do the job.
The basic reason for putting such a process in place is to harvest vast amounts of highly detailed data on users and then sell this data in bulk to companies worldwide at gigantic profits. The process might take place without you even knowing about your data being scraped.
The Internet of Things
“The Internet of Things” is a term that was coined in the mid-1980s and has come to be increasingly important over the years. Essentially, it applies to anything connected to the internet and can process on/off binary switching.
This is how we can use a child’s device as a drawing pad to harvest data. Even though it isn’t specifically intended for anything like that, it can still be linked online and does work like an operable computing device.
The upshot of all this is that there are not many ways to remain free of this practice if you’re using anything that can access the internet. The internet of things, it turns out, is not always what it seems. It’s often not what it seems at all.
So, while the internet of things was intended to be a positivity for humanity, it’s evident that some rather devious players have managed to get involved too. In all honesty, it was a certainty that some people would manage to turn things this way.
Does it Matter?
In the end, some may say that it just doesn’t matter all that much. So what if some of your data got harvested by some far-off group of companies? It’s not as if your money is being stolen from your bank account or anything.
Sure, that’s true. Web scraping and other forms of data harvesting don’t break into your bank and take your money. They do, however, underhandedly remove your privacy. An analogy that works well in this context is the “peeping Tom.”
It’s often the case that victims of voyeurism are utterly unaware of the crime until the “Tom” is caught. One could make the same argument for web scraping, except with an addition: you’re not merely being spied on. The data gathered is used to predict your habits, as well.
That’s what makes web scraping so financially valuable that companies will buy it in huge quantities. It allows others to use the information gathered to predict your online behaviors to more effectively target you with marketing.
Conclusion
It’s possible that you aren’t bothered by the process of web scraping at all and see it as not much more than a harmless modern form of voyeurism being conducted by people you’ll never meet.
But wouldn’t that rejoinder also naturally apply to any cases of privacy? There is some truth to that. Nobody is directly stealing from you or harming anyone you care about. If we adopt that kind of attitude, there’s the risk that privacy itself may soon vanish.
Well, for those who believe in the value of the right to privacy as a principle, there are options out there to keep you protected from prying eyes. What you do as a private citizen is nobody’s business but your own, and you are responsible for taking measures to protect yourself from unwanted actions against your private matters.
