Safe Use of Data Extraction – Proxies

You may have stumbled across a situation in Your life when trying to access websites to read articles only to be met by a paywall. Paywalls are a common thing in websites that provide news articles or publish research. This is a part of their business as website owners as they can generate income with people buying a subscription to their content. It also acts as a safeguard for anyone nosy enough to poke around.

Since the use of bots in data gathering, a lot of websites have bolstered up defenses against the usage of them. A bot essentially takes up space in web traffic as a normal human would. The catch is that it is possible to generate a lot of bots, which would, in turn, block the traffic for regular users. That is why a lot of websites identify, trace and block the traffic incoming from bots if caught early.

However, there is a safe way to go to a website that would be in normal conditions unavailable for You. It is the usage of proxies.

Digging for Data

There are many ways one can gather data. It can start with having file cabinets filled with folders and paper stacks. Or someone could go through research throughout the Internet. Searching for reliable sources of information takes time. But that reliability is what is needed to provide the best quality results.

Another important piece in the data-gathering field is the process of automation. The use of software to do the work. This has become more and more common use nowadays with technologies rapidly advancing and methods of using them as well.

All of the data gathering methods have their limitations. Some are more reliable and time-efficient than others. Yet, all of them require a careful approach to maintain the best results.

One of the most notable limits for data extraction with the use of automation or bots is that bots are mostly ‘grab and go’. It is easy for the website defenses to spot that the visitor to their website is not a real human. This leaves people and businesses using web scrapers to having their sources of information cut off.

One must remember, that while many websites are open to visitors, certain rules should be followed. This ensures that everything done is legal and thoughtful of ethical boundaries.

The Safeguard

As previously mentioned, there is a possibility to act safer when going through websites. The use of proxies.

Now, what exactly is a proxy? A proxy is an additional element, a virtual address. In a way, it works like that when Your Internet signal travels from Your internet service provider (ISP) to Your home network. It acts as a server to which the signal goes through from ISP and bounces back to Your computer. This provides a stealthy way of browsing through pages. In a nutshell, a proxy is a middle man.

Most of the websites could blacklist Your IP from making many requests from their servers at once. Mainly this is done because their systems can mistake it as a hacker attack. This can overload their servers, bringing their webpage to a halt. However, if the server traffic is coming from different locations over the world with the use of proxies, then Your IP can be safe from blacklisting.

Still, having one of Your proxies banned? No problem, just connect to another. There are a lot of proxy services around there which offer the possibility of bouncing Your signal to one of their servers around the world.

To keep You and Your work safe, follow the means of having a reliable way of data gathering. The use of proxies is just one of many ways out there to explore. 

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