The Internet has given rise to a dizzying array of people-search sites and data brokers that gather and compile public information and social-networking profiles. The sites gather information from public sources such as property records and telephone listings, and other information is harvested by “scraping” — or copying — websites where people post information about themselves.
The line between research and invasion of privacy has never been so thin as with data "scraping"—the practice of rapidly collecting massive amounts of personal data from the web to sell as consumer research.
Scrapers
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