Scraping Ethics and Best Practices

Web scraping exists in a gray area. Just because you can scrape a site doesn't mean you should. Follow these principles.

Check robots.txt - This file tells bots what's allowed. Visit example.com/robots.txt to see the rules.

Respect rate limits - Add delays between requests:

import time

for url in urls:
    response = requests.get(url)
    time.sleep(1)  # Wait 1 second between requests

Identify yourself - Set a user agent that includes contact info:

headers = {"User-Agent": "MyBot/1.0 (contact@example.com)"}
requests.get(url, headers=headers)

Don't scrape private data - Login-protected content, personal information, and copyrighted material have legal implications.

Consider the API first - Many sites offer official APIs. They're more reliable and explicitly permitted.

Being a good citizen keeps scraping sustainable for everyone.

I discuss ethics and legal considerations in my Web Scraping course.