Ethics and Legal Use

Scraping power comes with responsibility.

You must know:
What is allowed.
What is risky.
What is illegal.

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Check robots.txt

Example:
https://example.com/robots.txt

If disallowed, do not scrape.

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Read Terms of Service

Many sites forbid scraping.
Respect them.

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Avoid personal data

Never collect:

• emails
• phone numbers
• passwords
• private profiles

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Ethical rules

• scrape slowly
• don’t overload servers
• identify yourself if possible
• stop if asked

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Real world use cases

Good:

• price comparison
• research
• public datasets

Bad:

• stealing content
• bypassing paywalls
• abusing systems

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Graph: responsible scraping

flowchart TD
  A[Want to Scrape] --> B{Allowed?}
  B -->|Yes| C[Scrape Responsibly]
  B -->|No| D[Do Not Scrape]

Remember

• Legal issues can be serious
• Always prefer official APIs
• Be a responsible developer