Back in April 2022, the US Ninth Circuit of Appeals ruled that web scraping of publicly accessible data is FULLY LEGAL! Microsoft had previously challenged the process and said the practice endangers user privacy.
First…. What is a Proxy?
In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource.
Now, why would you use a Proxy?
Although proxy servers could be abused and used for nefarious purposes like everything else, there are many legitimate uses. The top reasons to use a Proxy are for bypassing censorship filters, increasing your search engine optimization, or even checking on your Geo-targetted ad campaigns.
There are many software tools that have been around for decades that have a feature to load up proxy lists. One of the most powerful and popular name is ScrapeBox. Originally released in 2009, this application is used by SEO companies and freelancers from all over the world.
Another application that has been around since 2008 is SENuke. This application has dozens of features and even 100,000 built in proxies ready to use. Although since these proxies are shared with thousands of other webmasters, it is highly recommended to subscribe to a private proxy service featured on ProxyServices.com.
Web scraping has been around almost as long as the internet existed. Have you ever visited Archive.org and typed in your favorite website to see what it looked like in 1995? Although scraping started as a little-known niche online, it has grown to become mainstream and Fortune 500 companies now collect large amounts of information. Because search engines like Google and Bing rate limit the requests per IP address to prevent abuse, proxies will always continue to play an important role on the internet.