Web Scraping Anonymously in 2020

Web scraping is a process of extracting a large amount of data from a website that is used for different purposes. By using this technique, users can save the data in a specific format on a local drive or database in the form of tables or spreadsheets.

Usually, websites didn’t allow access to download the data from web pages. And it is a time-consuming process to copy or download the content manually from web pages. Therefore, web scraping is useful to download the data automatically. It is easy for users to manipulate the data and get the desired output.

Various web scraping software is available over the internet that helps to download the data in a short time. But the common problem faced by the web scrapers is that the webserver blocked the IP address of the computer. It prevents users and web scraping software to get access to web pages.

Therefore, it is recommended to perform web scrapping anonymously to avoid blocking. The following are the few ways that are beneficial to prevent blocking.

Contents:

• Proxy Servers
• Use Human Scraping Behavior
• Disable Cookies While Scraping Data
• Captchas Solving Service
• Use Referrer
• Increase Delay Time
• Switch User Agents
• Conclusion

Proxy Servers

It is one of the most common methods used in web scrapping by using different IP Addresses from multiple locations. It helps the web scrapers to hide their identity, and web servers take it as requests from different users.

Usually, the webserver blocked an IP Address when it detects multiple requests for resources from the same IP Address. 

Even after using the proxy for web scraping, you need to create a pool of IP Addresses instead of using a single IP Address. Yet it is still easy for the server to detect the unique IP and blocks it immediately.

There are hundreds of cloud servers available that helps the users to send every request of data extraction with a unique IP Address. It automatically reduces the chances of being getting caught. This technique is also known as web scraping IP rotation or rotating proxy service.

Use Human Scraping Behavior

Different websites use anti-scraping mechanisms to prevent scraping of their website. These mechanisms are capable of identifying the scraping behaviors of bots with the help of clicks and mouse movements.

Usually, a human spends different time duration on the website and perform different click ratio. But in contrast, data extraction bots work in a consistent behavior in terms of time and clicks. Therefore, anti-scraping tools easily detect and block the IP immediately.

Therefore, it is necessary to use random scrapping behavior by spending different time and random clicks as well as various mouse movements. It will provide an impression of human behavior and helps to prevent bot detection.

Disable Cookies While Scraping Data

This technique works dramatically and helps to avoid IP detection while scraping data from any website. Usually, when a visitor visits a particular website, some of the elements automatically save in the temporary folder of the browser. 

It is beneficial for the sites to improve the speed because websites don’t have the need to provide such information on subsequent visits. 

But it also informs the websites that this user visits the site before and increases the chances of being caught while scraping the data.

Therefore, you must ensure that the cookies settings are disabled on the browser. In this way, it provides the impression that the visitor comes first time on the website because it requires downloading all the necessary elements to display the web content.

Captchas Solving Service

Captchas are used by various sites to improve the security feature of the website. The primary purpose of captchas is to avoid the visits of bots; therefore, it asks for human verification. But in some cases, the captchas are provided to suspicious IP Addresses only.

In this case, switching to random IP Addresses is useful for avoiding the captcha verification. However, there are many captcha resolving services that are also available over the internet that helps to solve the captcha automatically. 

These services use optical character recognition (OCR) technology to solve the captchas.

Use Referrer

Every website knows very well that how visitors reach on the website and what medium or device they used. Therefore, it will create doubt when you are trying to reach the site directly again and again. The referred header is a technique that helps to avoid bot detection.

In this technique, you can use referrers like www.google.com to reach a particular website for data scraping instead of using a direct URL. 

You can use many other search engines and also can use a search engine designed for a specific location.

Increase Delay Time

Mostly, users try to complete the scraping process as early as possible. But it increases the chances of bot detection by websites. As we mentioned earlier, if data scraping is done manually, it takes a lot of time as compared to do it with automatic bots.

Therefore, it is easy for websites to detect the accessing speed. As the website finds your rate excessive, it will block your IP automatically.

It is recommended to scrape the data randomly with different times periods. Make sure that there is a sufficient gap between visits to the website to avoid detection.

Switch User Agents

The user agent is a series of information that is used to find the information of a user. It includes information about the version of the web browser, type of browser, and operating system of the user. Automatic data scrapers send various data requests as compared to manually done a human.

Therefore, it is easy for websites to detect and match the user agent information. It is recommended to make a list of user agents and switch between them randomly to avoid detection and getting blocked.

Conclusion

No doubt, data scraping is the easiest way to collect data for different purposes. But it requires some techniques and expertise as well. Therefore, to ensure effective and efficient data scraping, it is crucial to follow the tips and tricks to avoid IP Address blocking.

In the above article, we mention different tricks and tips that are beneficial for effective data scraping. Hopefully, these tips provide you a lot of information and help to get better output.