Getting Started

Welcome to the Web Scraping & Data Extraction resource center!

This documentation aims to bring light on Anti-bots inner workings, fingerprinting techniques and how to bypass them.

What is browser fingerprinting?#

Browser fingerprinting is a technique used to identify and track individual web browsers based on the specific characteristics and settings of the device being used. This includes information such as the browser type and version, operating system, active plugins, timezone, language settings, screen resolution, and other system configurations.

By collecting and combining these unique attributes, websites can create a “fingerprint” of a browser, which can be used for various purposes, including online tracking, fraud prevention, and enhancing security measures. Unlike cookies, which can be easily deleted or blocked, browser fingerprinting is more covert and difficult for users to prevent.

What is a Anti-bot software?#

Browser anti-bots are security measures implemented within web browsers or websites to detect and prevent automated access by bots. These tools are designed to distinguish between legitimate human users and automated scripts or programs that might attempt tasks like scraping data, spamming, or conducting fraudulent activities.

Anti-bot mechanisms can include challenges like CAPTCHAs, which require users to perform tasks difficult for bots, analysis of user behavior patterns, or monitoring for suspicious activity such as unusually fast clicking or navigation. The goal of browser anti-bots is to protect websites from malicious automated attacks while maintaining a smooth experience for human users.

Why trying to bypass them?#

Anti-bots and fingerprinting techniques gets more and more widespread accross the web, with main goal of securing users sessions. However, those systems are also used as “anti-scraping” solutions, trying to counter legitimate public data scraping and “on-behalf-of-users” scraping techniques such as “on-screen” web scraping.

This considerably slower innovation process for startups that rely on those techniques. The purpose of the “Web Scraping & Data Extraction” community is to provide solutions for those companies.

Anti-bots are also making extensive use of browsers data and store them on third-party servers, ignoring all “do-not-track” policies. Bypassing anti-bots is becoming more and more important for privacy focused users without having to restrict their access to services.

How to contribute?#

WIP