'Scrapers' Dig Deep For Data On Web

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.

Comments

Like Google?

[bonch]

Firms offer to harvest online conversations and collect personal details from social-networking sites, résumé sites and online forums where people might discuss their lives.

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, discussing their plans for utilizing their vast archive of valuable user data. The battle for online privacy was lost long ago.

Re:Like Google?

[betterunixthanunix]

The battle for online privacy was lost long ago.

Only because one side of the battle never bothered to fight. Nobody was forced to go to social networking websites and post their life story, anyone could encrypt their email and IM conversations, and ad blocking software is widely available. Large amounts of the information that these companies are aggregating could have been made far more difficult to obtain if the majority of computer users could have been bothered.

Sadly, the Internet has become more of an adversarial game than a way to unite people.

The link in the summary is a dupe

[Nero Nimbus]

This was talked about back in October:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/10/15/1340244/Data-Miners-Scraping-Away-Our-Privacy?from=rss

I thought the guy in the picture looked familiar...

Re:Bravo

[TypoNAM]

He used a pseudonym on the message boards, but his PatientsLikeMe profile linked to his blog, which contains his real name.

I don't think we need to dig any deeper to come to the conclusion that this guy is an idiot.

Indeed, Joseph Swanson.

Re:They won't get me

[sakti]

IMO it's better to have an easy to find public 'you' online for these people to track. You use that for everything 'safe'. You then use multiple anonymous accounts for anything you don't want tracked.

If you have nothing tracking online I think it might start looking more suspicious than not. Plus having nothing might encourage 'them' to dig in and try to relate you to your anonymous account(s).

Re:They won't get me

[hoggoth]

Wow, that's pretty inappropriate for an interviewer to require you to open your personal family or friends circle to him. What if my family is discussing my alcoholic father, my pregnant niece, my HIV+ friend, and my habit of killing interviewers and burying them in my backyard?