Is Web Scraping Legal?

This post is inspired by an article originally posted here.

Web scraping is the process of extracting data from websites. It can be used to collect information such as prices, contact details, or even entire articles. While it can be a useful tool, there are some legal considerations to keep in mind before you start scraping away.

There are some arguments concerning the legality of web scraping, but they often depend on who is making the argument and what incentives they have.

It really depends on the situation and definition. Here, we define web scraping simply as the process of collecting data from across the internet. Gathering data from other websites is a useful and essential part of many legitimate data analysis operations. Web data scraping itself isn’t illegal, but it can be illegal or in a grey area depending on these three things:

1. The type of data you are scraping
2. How do you plan to use the scraped data 
3. How you extracted the data from the website

What Types of Data Are Illegal To Scrape?

There are a few types of data that you should never scrape without the explicit permission of the owner. This includes but is not limited to:

1. Personal data - This includes things like: 

• Name
• Email
• Phone Number
• Address
• User Name
• IP Address
• Date of Birth
• Employment Info
• Bank or Credit Card Info
• Medical Data
• Biometric Data

Scraping this type of data without permission could result in identity theft or other types of fraud.

2. Copyrighted data - This generally applies to the following types of web data:

• Articles
• Videos
• Pictures
• Stories
• Music
• Databases

Is Web Scraping Itself Illegal?

The simple answer to this question is: no, web scraping is not illegal. However, there are some gray areas when it comes to web scraping and the law. The main issue has to do with how you use the data that you scrape. If you use the data for personal or commercial purposes, you should be fine. However, if you use the data in a way that violates the terms of service of the website you're scraping, you could be violating the law.

What type of information is legal to scrape?

1. Am I scraping personal data?
2. Am I scraping copyrighted data?
3. Am I scraping data from behind a login?

If your answer to all three of the above questions is “No”, then your web scraping is legal.