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Web Scraping with Proxies: The Complete Guide
Web Scraping with Proxies: The Complete Guide
What is a proxy?
A proxy is a safe way to stay on the internet. While on the internet, there are many chances that your details might get stolen by some hacker or malicious people. These people sell data to other companies or any third-party application. To protect our IP from such people, we use a proxy that masker hides the actual IP of the network preventing any data leaks in any way. While scarping a website, there can be various reasons due to which an IP proxy might be required by the company. The proxy will work as a middleman between the user and the site they want to scrape. It will prevent the IP trade-off of the user in exchange for the data and will also prevent the data leak while keeping the data of the user safe and sound.
The need for proxy for web scraping
The proxy server will act as a middleman allowing the data exchange between the user and the site they want to scrape. The website from which you want to scrape information will have no idea about your IP address and this way you will remain anonymous on the internet. Your IP address won’t be leaked in any condition and the data will be delivered to you easily and effectively. There will be no compromise in the data provided to the user however, the privacy of the user will be fully ensured and it won’t be leaked due to the help of the proxy IP address. There are many other reasons as well due to which the proxy is used while scarping the website by the people. Leys have a look at them
Avoid Ip blocking
Some of the scraping websites can block your IP if you take too much data from themselves, to prevent this from happening, people use proxies. While using a proxy, the scraping site isn’t able to see our IP address and so it isn’t able to block our IP address. In exchange, we can take as many data or information that we want from the website.
Bypass limit
Another good reason for using the IP address is because they help to bypass the target limit that is set up by some websites. People usually use software to gather data from the website. Having the software running for too long will help the site to identify it and hit the limit after which the person is unable to extract more data from the website. To prevent this from happening, the person uses a proxy. This way your IP is not known to the website and you can scrape the data without any limit.
Different types of proxy available in the market
Boldly speaking on the internet people use three types of proxy. These proxy cover or uncover their IP address which then they use to scrape the data from the website. Many different people use different types of proxy based on their advantages or disadvantages. Let’s have a look at each of the three IP’s one by one.
Residential IP
The first type of IP that people use is a residential IP. These Ip are the true IP of people that are allotted to them when they established a new connection. These IP contains all the data about yourself and also contains much other information about yourself. These IP is dangerous to use on scraping the website and they can give your details easily once they are tapped.
Datacentre IP
The next type of proxy is the datacentre proxy. These Proxy are provided to make the original or the residential IP of people. These IP proxy mask the original IP and allow people to freely use the scrape data from the website. Many different companies provide datacentre IP to people. They are easy to use and available at a good rate which makes them a better choice to use on the internet. The only downside is that these IP addresses are easy to identify and some website can block these IP address easily. So, proceed with caution with these IPs.
Mobile IP
The residential Ip was the IP address that is limited when you set up any broadband or the WIFI service in your house. However, if you do the same thing on your phone, then your phone is provided with a mobile IP. These are provided by mobile operators or mobile sim cards. These are the true identity of your company and they can easily give your true details once they are found out by the hackers. These are available once only and are expensive to purchase again and again. However, these do not provide any blockage of any system and one can access any website they would like to thanks to this IP address.
Why people use web scraping
Many people think when people scrape website it is only to find out mobile numbers or emails of the people so that the marketing companies can send messages or call on these numbers telling the people above the various schemes that are launched by the company. However, all these claims are false. There are various reasons for which people can use web scraping software. Amongst these reasons, the major one is the marketing one, however, it's not the only one. There are many other reasons as well. Some people use web scraping to get data out of the website for writing purposes. Other people use it to compare the price of the items from all over the internet. Depending upon the desire of the people, there can be infinite reasons why people use web scraping.
Is it legal?
There is a thin line between legally scraping the website and illegally scraping a website. Most of the people do not know about this thin line and they often scrape the website illegally. This is a crime and it can cause some serious trouble once you are caught. However, one can legally as well as scrape a website and remain on the safe side. To remain safe, make sure to properly use the data and do not cause any harm from the data. Also, make sure to behave well on the scarping website and do not scrape the whole website. Scrape only a part of the website.
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