DEV Community: MarianhBurnsk

Bad Bot 101: What is it & How to Detect and Block Bad Bots?

MarianhBurnsk — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 07:33:28 +0000

As a website owner or administrator, it is important you know about bad bots and some of the bad effects they can have on your site, and how to block them. All of these and many more will be discussed below.

About half of the Internet traffic is bot traffic, and a half of that originates from bad bots. What does this mean to you as a web service owner or even an admin? If you are not careful, you will be making decisions based on contaminated data – thanks to bot traffic.

I have had experience with newbie site owners claiming they have over 1K pageview only for me to dig deeper and break the sad news to them – a sizable amount of that traffic is not from a human – there are computers at the other end interacting with your website in an automated manner, and you have mistaken some of their actions to be human actions.

Unfortunately, some of the actions they carry out have adverse effects – or have access to the content they shouldn’t. for these reasons, you need to be proactive and learn how to detect when a bad bot is messing around with your web property.

Failure to do so will means accepting anything thrown at you – even by your competitor – and you know what that means? In this article, I will be opening your eyes to the world of bad bots, how they affect your site, and how to block them, among other lessons to be learned.

What is an Internet Bot?

This article is all about Internet bots with a focus on the bad ones. For this reason, let take a look at what Internet bots are. Internet bots, also known as web bots or simply bots, are computer programs that carry out automated tasks on the Internet.

Basically, they send web requests as you would with a web browser but have the power to do that in a repetitive and at fast speed. While a human can only send a handful of requests in a minute, a web bot can send hundreds and even thousands of requests in a minute. One thing you need to know about web bots is that they carry out tasks that are repetitive and simple – but some can carry out complex tasks. With a bot, you can automate the checkout process of purchasing limited-edition items, monitor your site performance, carry out SEO audits, and scrape data from web pages. Likewise, you can use computer bots to perform a denial-of-service attack. It can also be used for click fraud, view fraud, and even spam.

From the two groups, you can see that there are bad bots as well as good ones. While you want to keep the good bots around, you will want to keep the bad bots out of your site as much as you can.

What Makes a Bot a Bad Bot?

From the above, you already have the idea that not all bots are bad. So, what makes a bad a bad bot? Generally, what makes a bot a bad bot is subjective.

Take, for instance, Bing search engine web crawler might be good to you as a site owner as it helps index your site – and could potentially send you traffic.

However, if the same Bing web crawler crawls Google SERPs and scrapes their listing and ranking to use it to improve their own ranking, then it becomes a bad bot to Google while being good to you. However, this does not mean that there is no general acceptance of what makes a bot a bad bot. A bot becomes a bad bot when it is used for carrying out malicious acts. But no, that’s not all, there are bots that might not really have malicious intent such as web scraping bot, but for the fact that they might have adverse effects on the sites they extract data from without any benefit to the site or it owner, then they can also be regarded to bad bots.

Bad bots can also be regarded as malicious bad. Their activities are to reward their operators at the expense of the sites they operate on. Unfortunately, the increase in bad bot traffic is on the increase, and you need to watch out for them.

Good Bots Vs. Bad Bots

From the above, you have an idea of what bad bots are. What about their good counterparts? The intent behind a bot is what generally makes it a good bot, provided it sticks to that and does not adversely affect the sites it operates on. There are two things you need to take note of.

The first is that the intent must be good, and the second – it must not have any negative effect on sites it interacts with. Also, good bots respect the robots.txt directives of a site while bad bots do not. With this, you need to understand that a good bot can quickly turn into a bad bot.

Take, for instance, a crawler that has been designed to crawl your site for the purpose of indexing could adversely affect your site if it sends too many requests that your site can handle. So, unlike bad bots, good bots are out to help you. So, what are the examples of good bots out there? Perhaps the most notable examples of good bots are search engine crawlers such as Googlebot.

These bots crawl your site in other to index your site content so that when a user searches for relevant keywords, they can send such users to your site. These sites respect the robots.txt file and wouldn’t crawl your site if you do not want them to crawl your site.

Aside from search engine crawlers, there are some bots for helping out with copyright searches, SEO audit bots that are good bots. Some of these bots might not be beneficial to you but not harmful and provide benefits for the betterment of the Internet, such as crawlers of Internet archives. Good bots are known as also known as helpful bots.

Types of Bad Bots

Just so if you do not know, there are many types of bad bots in the market, and each has the malicious act it is meant to achieve. In this section of the article, we will be discussing the popular types of bad bots interacting with websites and web services on the Internet.

Traffic Bot

Traffic bots are the types of Internet bots that have been developed to send fake traffic to a website. These are the bots that will inflate your pageview count, giving you the hope of an increase in traffic when, in reality, there was actually no increase in traffic.

These types of bots are used by web services that sell traffic. They will make you a promise of sending real users to your site but will end up sending bot traffic. There are different variations to traffic bot.

While the ones described the deal with inflating page view counts, we have ones that are used for clicking advertisement in the case of ads fraud, some watch videos and click links, among others.

Spam Bots

Spam bots are the types of Internet bots that visit web pages and carry out tasks that can be regarded as spam. One of the notable examples of spam bots are bots that post automated comments in the comment section of a blog or in a discussion forum.

If you manage a blog or a website that allows user-generated content, then there is a high chance that you must have come across this type of bot as the comment are generic, spammy, and usually contain URLs the operators have an interest in. Some spam bots are used for political campaigns and changing narratives.

Web Scrapers

Web scrapers are the kind of Internet bots you will call content theft facilitating bots. This is because they are designed to visit web pages and extract data from them even without the permission of the web owner or administrator. They are the tool for web data extraction.

While the act of web scraping in the face of the law is legal as far as the content is publicly available, does not require authentication to access, and the content being scrapped is not copyrighted, website owners frown at it and, as such, can be regarded as a bad bot. In some situations, web scrapers can even shut down a low-powered website if the send too many requests.

Botnets

A botnet can be referred to as a collection of zombie computers. Zombie computers are compromised computers that hackers have access to without the knowledge of their owners. Hackers can make use of botnets for coordinated DDoS attacks in order to bring down a computer. They could also make use of them for other malicious tasks.

Checkout Bots

Another class of bots that are regarded as bad bots are checkout bots used during limited-edition releases. It is a known idea that limited-edition releases are competitive, and a user is entitled to only one unit of an item, It's hot on sneaker copping.

However, some bots have been developed to go through the process of the purchase at a fast speed to purchase more units, thereby depriving others the opportunity of making a purchase only to turn out and sell to them at resale prices. This is common in the apparel, ticketing, and sneaker market.

Aside from the above types of bad bots, there are many others, but the ones described above are the most common on the Internet.

Effects of Bad Bots

From the above, if you have read in between the lines, you know some of the adverse effects of bad bots. But if you do not. Then do not worry; we will be discussing them in detail below.

Bots Contaminate your Engagement Data

One thing you need to understand is that while some bot traffic can be detected and separate from real human traffic, some are stealthy, and there is no way you will differentiate them from human traffic. And there lies in the problem. Traffic bots can increase pageview and even give you the impression that you have unique visitors.

If this happens, then just know that your engagement data has been contaminated, and any decision you make off it is wrong except if you are able to estimate the percentage of bot traffic and then subtract it from your overall traffic.

Slows Down Performance

When a web server gets too many requests more than it can handle, its performance will be tempered. Unfortunately, bots are known to send too many requests and, as such, could overwhelm a web server if the web server is low-powered. This is the reason some bot operators run their bots only at night.

Aside from bots that were not intentionally developed to slow down a website, there are some that have been designed to attack a website by sending it too many requests more than it can handle, and because of this, it is shut down. This type of cyber-attack is known as a DDoS attack and is carried out using botnets.

Steal Data

Another side effect of bad bots from a website administrator’s perspective is that data on their websites are extracted without their consent and permission, which could mean stealing. In some instances, these data cost the website money to generate and only available behind a paywall. Using a web scraper, the data can be collected and make public.

Increase Server Running Cost

If you can, it is better you discourage bot traffic on your website. This is because even if you do not see any side effect it has directly on your site, then you need to know that they increase your running cost as web hoist careless whether requests are coming from human or a bot, and as such, they could scale up, and too many requests are received, and then your cost is geared up. Unfortunately, bot traffic, especially the bad ones, is not of any benefit to you.

How to Detect Bad Bots

Bad bots have been designed to be undetectable, and as such, it will take careful digging to know if your site has a bot traffic attack. Let take a look at some of the pointers of bot traffic.

Unusual Spike in Traffic

As a site owner, you have your average pageview and unique daily visit you should use as a metric. If there is an unusual spike in traffic and you cannot pinpoint the reason behind the spike in traffic, then most likely, bots are interacting with your site.

Not only will you get a spike in traffic, but the traffic will most be direct traffic with a highly unusual bounce rate. The location the traffic originates from can also give you a clue, especially if it is from locations you do not get such an amount of traffic from. [su_note note_color="#f9f8f8" radius="0"] Another thing you need to take note of is the inconsistencies in pageview data between Google Analytics and your other traffic analytics service, like Crazyegg and Microsoft Clarity that offer Recordings and Replay user sessions and Heatmaps to Analysis, is Bot or not! [/su_note] Many analytic services have support for filtering bot traffic out – but the algorithm the use in detecting bot traffic is different, and as such, you can leverage on the inconsistency that does not exist before to tell when your site is being accessed by bots.

Server Performance is Affected Unexpectedly

This point is related to the number of requests been sent in a short while. If too many requests are sent in a short period of time, this will affect the performance of your site if the infrastructures are low-powered. As a web administrator, you should also have a record of the performance of your site in terms of response time and speed.

When your site becomes slow and there is a spike in traffic, then most likely, your site is being tampered with by bad bots. You cannot always rely on this as bots can mimic humans and slow down the rate at which they send requests, thereby keeping performance the same while carrying out their tasks unnoticed.

Junk Activities and Content Posting

One of the easiest ways to detect bots is in the content they post. Usually, bot operators do not have the time to craft good content, and as such, you can use that as a pointer.

When you start getting comments or posts that are generic, nonsensical, and with URLs embedded, then you need to know that those aren’t from real users from bots. Also, an unusual number of account creation with strange emails and other personal information is a pointer too.

Request Header Inspection

Most basic and unsophisticated bots do not send all of the headers that browsers send. In most cases, they even forget to set the user-agent header.

For those that send headers, they hardly send more than the user-agent string. In contrast, most browsers send a good number of header information, which is used for content negotiation. If you get requests with little to no headers submitted, then you can be sure that the request originates from a bot.

How to Block Bad Bots

When it comes to blocking bots from accessing your site, you need to know that you cannot succeed 100 percent. Facebook has not been able to do so, and so is Google, Amazon, and other major web services. All you can do is try and then make it unattractive because of the extra length they will have to go.

Set IP Address Request Limits

IP addresses are some of the unique identifiers web admin has access to and can use to pin down users. The could use this to their advantage by having the number of requests allowed from an IP address in a period of time.

If you get more requests from an IP address, this becomes unnatural, and as such, you can block subsequent requests from such an IP address. It is also important you block hosting providers used by datacenter proxy providers and their IP networks.

Make Use of Captcha Service

I bet you have had to deal with Captcha at some point on the Internet. Captcha is the acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers from Human. When a captcha service detects unusual or bot-like activity, it forces you to solve a problem in order to gain access.

While humans find it easy to solve them, computer programs such as bots find it difficult. In fact, there are advanced Captcha systems that are practically not solvable by bot. However, you need to know that Captcha can stand in the way of legitimate users and disrupt the user experience.

Block Unknown Browsers

Another way to block bots is to record fingerprints of major browsers and then block requests from sources that do not match any of the browsers you have fingerprinted. This will work for inexperienced bot developers as they do not make use of headless browsers and do not render JavaScript. You can even bring JavaScript triggers into the mix and block any request that does not trigger the JavaScript to execute.

Conclusion

Looking at the above, you can tell that bad bots are difficult to deal with. Most of the techniques you can use to block them can be circumvented. Take, for instance, if you are using IP tracking, proxies will make them useless.

There are anti-Captcha services out there to help solve Captcha while using headless browsers will take care of all JavaScript related anti-bot techniques.

Instead of trying to detect and block them yourself, I will advise you to make use of third-party services that can detect bad bots and block them – this will be a better option than using crude methods that can easily be bypassed.

How to Get the Best Nike Proxies

MarianhBurnsk — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 08:25:37 +0000

You may not be aware but Nike store has gone to great lengths to block people using proxies, aka Nike proxies, to purchase items from their online store. It’s mainly done to stop people from grabbing shoes and other items when they go on discount because using special software and Nike proxies means you can buy 100 pairs of shoes in less time than it takes a person to manually purchase 1 pair. No-one needs 100 pairs of anything and Nike knows that most people buy these shoes to resell them. So, if you are looking at setting up your own Nike elite proxy on a VPS then here are a few things you need to keep in mind.

First, you obviously need US IPs. Yes, no secret here. However, you will need IPs that aren’t blocked. So what or how does Nike block proxies? The easiest way to do this is by blocking IP ranges. My advice is to find a hosting company that is not very well known and offers IPs from a city or state that is not popular. Hopefully, you can see here that you need to fly under the radar. If you setup proxies with a hosting company that is very famous and located in a major city, then there is a much greater chance that someone else has already used those IPs as Nike proxies and they are already blocked. So, find a small company in a small city and start there.

Next, get one IP to test. Don’t go and get 10 IPs or however many you need when just starting out. You need to first check that the proxies will work with Nike. Get one IP, setup your server and see how it goes. Also, since you are just testing, make sure you try and get the cheapest server and IPs as you can. What you are doing here is testing. You may need to get 10 x VPS with different hosting companies just to test. You are simply looking to see which one works, so keep it basic and small when starting out.

Finally, see if you can get IPs from the hosting company that come from different subnets or ranges. By this I mean you want IPs that look different. If all your IPs start with 123.893.21.11 with the last two digits being different, then it is VERY easy to see that the same person is using these IPs. You need IPs that come from different C class ranges. This will give you IPs that look like 123.893.???.11, where the ??? part is different. Now, the problem here is that most hosting companies probably won’t be able to do this. However, it doesn’t hurt to ask. If they can’t do this, then at least try to get the last three digits, 123.123.123.???, completely different. Get them as spaced apart as much as possible.

Once you’ve found a few hosting companies that have IPs that work, then scale it up. Your Nike proxies won’t last long if you only have a handful. So, I recommend you find a bunch of companies, setup a test server with each of them and then try and find ones that work. When you have a couple of locations up and running, scale it up by getting more IPs for your Nike proxies. The more you use the proxies, then the greater the chance they will be detected and blocked by Nike. So, either try and get as many IPs as you can OR limit how often you use the IPs.

Below are the top 4 Nike SNKRS Proxies Providers:

1. Smartproxy

Arguably one of the best residential proxies in the market, Smartproxy provides a high-speed internet connection and high-grade performance matched by only a few in the industry. Interestingly, they have support for sneaker proxies, and Nike sites happen to be one of the key sites their sneaker proxies work with. These proxies can be either rotating or static, so the one you choose depends on the specs of your bot. It remains one of the best Nike proxies you can use.

Number of IP in Pool: Over 40 million
Location: 195 locations including cities in the United States
The concurrent connection allowed: Unlimited
Bandwidth: Starts at 20GB
Cost: Starts at $200 per month

2. Stormproxies

Stormproxies have risen to become one of the most popular residential proxies in the form of backconnect proxies. Their bandwidth is unmetered, and you get instant access after payment. They have been discovered to be one of the fastest residential proxies, providing up to a speed of 1Gbps. They sell only HTTP and HTTPS proxies, and as such, you have to make sure the Nike bot you intend to use these proxies on would have to be HTTP(S) based. If it’s not, Stormproxies isn’t the best for you.

Number of IP in Pool: Over 70,000
Location: The United States and EU region
The concurrent connection allowed: Unlimited
Bandwidth: Unlimited
Cost: Starts at $160 per month

3. Icedout Proxies

Icedout Proxies for Nike sites are made of IPv4 addresses, and as such, they help to provide protection from subnet bans. These proxies are some of the best Nike proxies in the market. They are fast and do not put you through the hassle of using a username and password for authentication – just whitelist your real device IP, and you’re good to go copping. You can enjoy a speed of up to 1Gbps from Icedout Proxies.

Number of IP in Pool: 110,000
Location: The United States only
The concurrent connection allowed: Unlimited
Bandwidth: Unlimited
Cost: Starts at $20 per month

4. Microleaves

Microleave has one of the largest networks of residential proxies in the industry. Their residential proxies have been tested on Nike sites, and they have proven to be one of the best residential proxies you can ever use to cop high on-demand, limited edition sneakers from Nike sites. These residential proxies are known as backconnect proxies and are rotated every 10 minutes; this makes it difficult for Nike anti-spam systems to detect and block them. With these proxies, you’re guaranteed uptime of about 99.9 percent and a speed of about 1Gbps.

Number of IP in Pool: 26 million
Location: Worldwide
The concurrent connection allowed: Not stated
Bandwidth: Unlimited
Cost: Starts at $124.99 per month

Conclusion

The proxies discussed above are not just random – they have been battle-tested and as such, you do not have to fear about getting your accounts banned or being denied access as far as you follow the best practices for copping Nike sneakers using Nike proxies and bots. You can choose any of the residential proxies discussed above, and you will have a hassle-free experience copping from Nike sites.

Free Web Scraping Software & Extension for Non-programmers

MarianhBurnsk — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 08:36:30 +0000

Are you looking forward to scraping data from the Internet but lacks the financial commitment to pay for a paid tool and the technical skills to develop web scrapers? Come in now and discover the free web scrapers in the market.

If you have been reading blog posts on this blog for a while now, you will know that I do not support users making use of some tools and services for free and this is not unconnected to the fact that free services can be unreliable and comes with limitations that will make them work inefficiently. Being that as it may, we cannot deny the fact that not everyone reading our blog posts have the financial capabilities to afford all of the tools and services we discuss, and as such, reading our blogs will be a waste of time for such people.

It is because of this set of people that we wrote this post. This article will be used to discuss the web scrapers you can use without any monetary commitment. Some of them are not actually free like others – the free plan might just be a free trial plan for testing, but depending on the requirements of your job, it may or may not work for you. The bottom line with using a free web scraper is, you have to learn to be comfortable with the limitations that come with them else, opting for their plans will be the best for you.

What is a Web Scraper?

Web scrapers are automation bots that crawl web pages and extract data from them through a process known as web scraping. They automate the whole process of gathering information online and remain the only viable tool for gathering large amounts of data online.

With a web scraper, you can extract data from millions of pages within a few hours; this is not achievable using manual data collection processes. However, they are only useful when a website does not provide an API or the API provided comes with a limitation.

Top 10 Free Web Scrapers

When it comes to the number of free web scrapers in the market, you need to know that there are many of them, but the question is – are they all worth your time? No! In fact, you need to know only a few of the free tools in the market can actually serve your purpose the way you want it. Let take a look at some of the top free web scrapers in the market right now.

ParseHub

Completely Free: Desktop app free
Free Trial Days: Free
Platform Support: Cloud, Desktop
Data Output Form: CSV, Excel, JSON

ParseHub is arguably the best free web scraper you can get in the market right now in terms of ease of usage and coming with advanced features. Unlike in the case of most free web scrapers that their free plan is for a stipulated timeframe, ParseHub is completely free if you install their software on your system – and they support Windows, Mac, and Linux.

ParseHub is a visual web scraping tool that what’s required of you is a point and clicks data set training on the required data, and the software will get them scraped for you after specifying the data. They have paid plans which are available in their cloud-based scraper.

Octoparse

Completely Free: No
Free Trial Days: 14 days of free trials
Platform Support: Cloud, Desktop
Data Output Form: CSV, Excel, JSON, MySql, SQLServer

Octoparse is one of the leading paid cloud-based web scraping tools. They have got a free plan that allows you to use their service by running a local copy of their web scraper on your system. This free plan allows you to crawl unlimited number of pages and even two concurrent local runs.

It is perfect for small and simple web scraping tasks. Octoparse is easy to use, and in just a few steps, you are on your way of converting a full website into a structured spreadsheet. It deals with all kinds of websites, including JavaScript featured websites. However, you have to provide proxies yourself.

Web Scraper Extension

Completely Free: Browser extensions are free
Free Trial Days: Browser extensions are free – no days attached
Platform Support: Cloud, browser extensions
Data Output Form: CSV, XLSX, JSON

Webscraper.io provides two web scraping tools for web scrapers – browser extensions and their cloud-based solution. The Web Scraper browser extensions available for both Chrome and Firefox are free and perfectly built for the modern web. They can handle JavaScript execution such as triggering and waiting for Ajax requests, page scrolling, and even pagination handling, among other things. It provides a point and clicks interface where you configure the scraper by click on the required data. With this tool, just like the ones above, you do not require a coding skill to scrape. Read more: The best web scraper chrome extension.

Helium Scraper

Completely Free: No
Free Trial Days: 10 days of full features
Platform Support: Desktop
Data Output Form: CSV, Excel

Helium Scraper is not a free web scraper. However, it provides a fully functional 10 days of free trials for businesses to try out their service before making a monetary commitment. Because the scraper attached to the free trial is fully functional, it makes perfect sense that it is one of the best web scrapers you can use for free. It is packed with a good number of amazing features you will like which includes fast extraction of data, it makes use of SQLite which can hold up to 140 terabytes, allows you to schedule scraping tasks, and export the scraped data in popular formats such as CSV, JSON, and Excel, among others.

ScrapeStorm

Completely Free: No
Free Trial Days: Starter plan is free with limitations
Platform Support: Desktop
Data Output Form: TXT, CSV, Excel, JSON, MySQL, Google Sheets, etc.

If the experience of the team is anything to go by, then ScrapeStorm should be top on the list. You know why? It was built by an ex-Google crawler team. ScrapeStorm requires no coding skills, as it is meant to be a visual web scraping tool. One interesting thing about ScrapeStorm is that it makes use of Artificial Intelligence to identify data making manual identification unnecessary in many use cases. ScrapeStorm automatically identifies images, prices, contact details, links, form, and lists, among other datasets. It also supports simulation operations when training the software in cases where automatic identification of data does not work. [su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj40xTFi_UI"]

Outwit Hub

Completely Free: No
Free Trial Days: Not stated
Platform Support: Desktop
Data Output Form: CSV, Excel, JSON

Outwit Hub is a downloadable software that you can install and scrape data from web pages. It actually comes in 4 plans – light, pro, expert, and enterprise edition. The light plan comes completely free but comes with some limitations. Even with the limitations, Outwit Hub light version is still very much a great tool for those without a budget but still need to make use of a web scraper. Outwit Hub can help you turn a web page into a structured database of data you can export into popular file formats such as a spreadsheet, CSV, and many others. There’s no doubt saying Outwit Hub is a powerful tool – but its powers are unleashed fully in its paid plan. [su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY2Bmob_g34"]

SimpleScraper

Completely Free: No
Free Trial Days: Chrome extension free
Platform Support: Cloud, Chrome extension
Data Output Form: JSON

SimpleScraper is another browser extension that can be said to be one of the top free web scrapers in the market. SimpleScraper is available as a Chrome extension, and you can install it and start scraping data and turning a website into an API. SimpleScraper is built for the modern web, and as such, you do not have anything to worry about when it comes to rendering and executing JavaScript. Aside from modern websites, SimpleScraper has also been found to worry excellently well on old websites. SimpleScraper makes the whole process of scraping websites easy, fast, and stress-free – at no financial cost.

Scraper

Completely Free: Yes
Free Trial Days: completely free
Platform Support: Chrome extension
Data Output Form: CSV, Excel, JSON

Scraper is a very basic and simple web scraper developed as a Chrome extension. Unlike the other web scrapers discussed above, it is unpopular and does not even have a website of its own. This is not unconnected to the fact that it is a one-man project with little attention given to it. Haven said that you need to know that it is still one of the most popular web scrapers available as a Chrome extension. Scraper wasn’t made for beginners as you are required to know XPath well to be able to make use of this tool – but if you do, you will find it to be very easy.

Diffbot Automatic APIs

Completely Free: No
Free Trial Days: 14 days
Platform Support: Cloud
Data Output Form: CSV, Excel, JSON

Diffbot is not a free tool, but it comes with 14 days limited free trial plan you can use for your web scraping task. There’s something unique about Diffbot Automatic APIs – it does not require site-specific training for it to function. This is because it makes use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to detect required data and extract them accordingly.

Without setting manual rules, their Automatic APIs will retrieve and clean data for you. Some of the domains Diffbot works perfectly for include products, videos, online discussions, and articles. It is fast, efficient, and reliable on any website you can think of.

Import.io

Completely Free: No
Free Trial Days: 1000 URLs per month in each month
Platform Support: Cloud
Data Output Form: CSV, Excel

If you are not looking forward to scraping more than 1000 web pages per month then, you can make use of Import.io, a popular cloud-based web scraping solution. Import.io has got its foot deeply rooted in the web scraping business, and their web scrapers have proven to work quite great. They have been built with modern websites in mind, and as such, they are perfect for JavaScript-heavy websites as well as old websites with HTML and CSS only. Import.io is quick and easy to use.

Conclusion

From the list above, you can tell that even with the limitations that come with most of them, almost all of the free web scrapers discussed above can be used for small-scale scraping projects without any major problem. However, if your target is scraping on a large scale, then you need to be ready to cough out some money for that as free scrapers can be inefficient for that.

Paid Proxies vs. Free Proxies

MarianhBurnsk — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 08:31:26 +0000

Are you confused regarding which proxies to buy? Do free proxies attract you because you can actually afford them? Well, this post is about the paid proxies and the free ones, and we’ll be going to discuss both of them in comparison with each other.

The question is, which one is better among the two? Since you're going to buy the proxies, you must know that proxies act as middlemen, and whether they are paid or free ones, they function the same way. The main difference between the two types of proxies is the speed and security level.

What are free proxies?

Free proxies are also called public proxies because of the reason that anyone can access them. Multiple users access these proxies at a time. The main good thing about these proxies is that they are free, and anyone can use them in spite of budget constraints. Another good thing about these proxies is that they are easy to use because there is no particular authorization or installation procedure required. You have to connect to the proxy, and you're good to go. Following are the main points that describe free proxies:

Multiple users access them at one time.
They are available free of cost.
Since many people are using the proxies, they are very slow.
Free proxies are very insecure because there is no authorization for their access.
There is a risk of viruses or other malware entering your system.
There may be hackers using the same proxy, and they can steal your information.
These proxies are easy to use.
Some free proxies allow the use of socks proxies and VPN which is suitable for security purposes.
They can bypass geological restrictions and censorship.

What are paid proxies?

Paid proxies are available at a cost, and they are more secure than free ones. These proxies use advanced technologies to protect their users' information, and they also offer excellent speeds. Since proxies act as intermediaries, there is always a slight speed drop with the paid proxies too, but that's not noticeable.

This speed drop is noticeable with the free proxies because others are using them too and the slight speed drop increases into a huge one. Paid proxies are always a good option as they provide ample security and good speed to the user. These proxies have many other advantages which make them a good choice as compared to the free proxies. Following are some important points regarding the paid proxies:

They are secure because they don’t allow the data to be leaked.
These proxies are mostly dedicated to a single person or sometimes shared by a few people, and thus there is a lesser risk of illegal activities such as stealing of information.
Some of these proxies are affordable, and some are expensive.
Since there are not many users using the proxies, they are very speedy. This allows the user to perform their web activities in a smooth manner without worrying about other users accessing the proxies.
They allow you to use various useful tools such as SEO and Scrapebox.
They allow you to create multiple social media accounts.
You can surf the web without revealing your identity. Being anonymous while surfing is one significant benefit that these proxies offer. Though free proxies provide anonymity too, web servers and other tools can easily detect and find out your real identity.

Difference between the Free and Paid Proxies:

	Speed	Security	Price	Geo-spoofing	Anonymity
Free	Low	Low	Free	Yes	Yes
Paid	High	High	Available at a cost	Yes	Yes

Looking at the table above, it is evident that the paid proxies are far better than the free ones in almost every aspect. The only thing that can make the free proxies an option is that they are free and are easy to use, and readily available.

When should free proxies be used?

Free proxies should be used only when you have some primary internet activities to do. For example, if you want to surf the web to get some information. We don't even recommend using free proxies for using social media accounts because this way your private information might be stolen.

Free proxies can't be used for playing games or using particular apps because they are too slow for this. Unless you have a very tight budget, we don’t recommend using free proxies. At peak times, you won't be even able to use a free proxy because of many users using it at the same time. However, if you want you can try using the free proxies in the early morning because at that time you'll get good speed for performing various tasks.

When should paid proxies be used?

Paid proxies are of different types such as shared and dedicated/private ones. The shared proxies are shared by only a few people, and thus they offer excellent speed and security both. However, since others are sharing the same proxy, there is a chance of some mishaps too. For example, if any of the people sharing the same proxy performed an illegal activity on the web, the IP will be shut down.

The shared proxies are overall secure, and they are speedy too, only a slight speed drop can be observed. You can use these proxies for using your social media accounts and performing other activities on the web such as geo-spoofing.

However, if you have some highly confidential tasks to do, you must go for the elite private proxies or the dedicated proxies. These proxies are the most costly, but they offer the best value for money too. You can use these proxies for online shopping, entering your bank credit info, or for doing transactions on the internet. The dedicated proxies will be dedicated to you only, and thus you'll be able to utilize full bandwidth and get total security too. But since you are the only one paying for the proxy, this is a bit expensive option.

15 Best Website Downloaders & Website Copier – Save website locally to read offline

MarianhBurnsk — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 07:28:09 +0000

Are you looking for the best website downloader for converting a website into an offline document? Then you are on the right page, as the article below will be used for discussing some of the best website downloaders in the market.

Technology has advanced that some things we have not even think of have not been made available. One of such is being able to download a website and have a local copy you can access anytime, even without a network connection. Websites are designed to be accessible online, and if you want to access a local copy, you will have to save for offline reading for each page of the website, which can be time-wasting, repetitive, and error-prone.

However, with the help of a website downloader, you can have a full website downloaded and saved locally for you in minutes. In this article, we will reveal to you some of the best website downloaders in the market that you can use for downloading websites.

What are Website Downloaders?

A website downloaded is a computer program either in the form of a simple script or a full-fledged installable software designed to make a website locally accessible on a computer memory by downloading its pages and saving them.

At its most basic level, a website downloader works like a crawler – it sends requests for a webpage, save it locally, and then scrap internal URLs from the page and add it to a list of URLs to be crawled – and the process continues until no new internal URL is found. My first encounter with a website downloader was when I got the full W3schools programming tutorials sent to me by a friend. And since then, the whole idea of downloading a website fascinated me.

If you have coding skills, you can develop one yourself as it is not difficult – all you require is the skill of sending HTTP requests, file handling, and exception handling. There are many reasons while you will want to have a website accessible locally, but the most popular reasons include being able to access it locally and save network fee upfront or even get it delivered to someone that does not have access to the Internet frequently. One thing you need to know about downloading a website is that the local copy can age quickly as updates to the websites are not rolled to the downloaded copy.

Top Website Downloader in the Market

When it comes to downloading a website, there are many website downloaders available for you to use. However, some are not as effective as others, and as such, we want to discuss some of the best website downloaders so that you can make a good choice quickly. Below are some of the best website downloaders right now.

Website Ripper Copier

The Website Ripper Copier is one of the best website downloaders you can use to convert a website into locally accessible documents. The Website Ripper Copier comes with robust and advanced features that make downloading full websites easy.

One thing you will come to like about this tool is that the downloaded website can be moved about, and you will be just fine. The Website Ripper Copier is a paid tool, but the payment you will make is worth it – thanks to the features that come with it. It is developed for the modern web and has support for JavaScript and AJAX websites, link extraction from links, web cookies, authentication, and many more.

Local Website Archive

The Local Website Archive is one of the tools developed by Aignesberger Software – their other products include site watcher, AM-deadLink, and AM-Note, among others. Their Local Website Archive product can be used to download a full website.

This tool comes in two versions – free and paid. While the free version will work, you will have more features available to you if you opt for their paid plan. Some of the features to be enjoyed as a paid user include ad-blocker, being able to archive a website as a PDF document, improved performance, duplicate finder, marking a page as read and unread, and rating documents, among others.

Website Downloader

The Website Downloader tool is another tool you can use to archive a website locally. One thing you will come to like about the Website Downloader tool is that it is available as an online tool and, as such, not platform-dependent.

Even though it is a web-based tool, it downloads all of the required assets into the website directory – this means that JavaScript files, CSS files, and even images are downloaded for you locally giving the local copy the feel of the online copy of the website. Another thing you will come to like about this tool is that it is completely free to use.

SitePuller

When it comes to downloading a website and making it and all of its assets, including images available locally, the SitePuller web app is not a pushover. This tool is available online and does not require you to install any software in other to use – you can access it from any browser of your choice – using any operating system and platform.

This tool will convert a website into a zip file for you in minutes. The SitePuller website has support for also downloading websites from Wayback Machine, which is handy for downloading websites that are no longer available. This tool will also help you copy the template of websites.

Cyotek WebCopy

The Cyotek WebCopy is an easy to use minimalistic website downloader that comes with no price tag on it – all that’s required is for you to download and start using.

This tool will examine the HTML mark-up of a website and attempt to discover all linked resources such as other pages, images, videos, file, and download everything into your device so that there is no difference between the downloaded copy and the real website as at the time of the download.

While this tool is free, minimalistic, and easy to use, it has one downside – it does not work well with JavaScript-rich websites.

HTTrack Website Copier

The HTTrack Website Copier will help you build a local copy of a website by recursively looking out for URLs on the site, downloading pages, and other site assets (images, CSS, and JS files) until there is no new URL to be crawled.

This tool has been around for a while now and has helped many Internet users convert a website into an offline site. The major setback I see about this project is that it seems to be abandoned, as the last time it got updated was in 2017. The tool is available for both Windows and Linux, and the file size is quite small. Installation is quick, and usage is easy.

SiteSucker

The SiteSucker app is a Macintosh application available for both Mac and iOS platforms. With SiteSucker, you can download a website and make it locally available online. This will enable you to share the website and have users that do not have access to the Internet access it as if they are connected to the Internet.

It downloads all of the website assets, including images, videos, and files, and duplicates the site structure locally, giving the feel that you are accessing it online meanwhile you are actually doing that offline. This tool is available in many international languages and also has a pro version with advanced features.

SurfOffline

I must confess, I like the name of this website downloader because of the creativity in it. However, it is not just about the name – the downloader is also one of the tip downloaders in the market. One thing you will come to notice is the simple interface this tool comes with even though, in reality – it is an advanced tool with powerful features.

The setup wizard will walk you through the downloading setting for websites. You can use it to download n entire website or a part of it. It is fast and can handle about 100 pages simultaneously, making it possible to download within a short period of time.

Website eXtractor

The website eXtractor tool is one of the best website downloaders you can use to download a whole website or a part of it in an easy and effective manner. The tool comes with an intuitive design that is easy to understand even for first-time users.

While it works, I feel the developers need to do a little as the tool currently does not have a website of its own – it can only be downloaded from third-party websites. If the tool is a free tool, I will understand, but for a paid tool not to have a website – that is something I don’t understand. In terms of performance, the Website eXtractor can be said to be excellent as it can download about 100 files at a go.

Web2Disk

The Web2Disk will make a website available locally for you to browse without access to the Internet after it is done downloading it for you. You have the liberty to move the folder around and use it anywhere.

With this tool, you can copy a website into a CD or a USB Disk, and it will work just fine – relative links are used, and as such, moving the folder with the website content would not break the site. This tool is not free – it comes with a price tag and but you can make use of its free trial for a start, and if you like it, you can then make a purchase.

NCollector Studio

The NCollector Studio is a product of Colluna Software. This software is one of the applications you can use to convert a website into a document you can access locally.

The NCollector is the all-in-one solution covering your needs, whether you're a professional or home user. This software might not be popular when compared to the ones discussed above, but it works quite well. This tool needs to be downloaded and installed before you can make use of it.

Offline Explorer

The Offline Explorer is another website downloader you can use to download websites to your local storage and access it offline as if you are accessing it online. This tool can be considered pricy, considering many of the downloaders on the list are free of charge. The license fee for the Offline Explorer is $79.

However, this tool comes with advanced features. Some of its features include being easy and flexible, comes with a chromium engine, makes it possible to even capture social media sites, ability to set priority for files, and many more.

Archivarix

The Archivarix software is completely easy to use. With the tools provided by Archivarix, you can do a lot related to copying a website. Some of the tools that you can get from Archivarix include a tool for restoring a website from a Wayback Machine, downloading a live website, and a WordPress plugin.

With this tool, you cannot only download a website and make it locally available offline, but you can also download a website that was once online but has been taken down – provided the website has been captured by the web archive Wayback Machine.

Webscrapbook

Looking at the list above, you can see that there is no browser extension on the list – if you are looking for a browser extension to use, then the Webscrapebook is the downloader of choice. The Webscrapebook is a Firefox browser extension that you can use to download a website and make it available locally offline on your local storage or have it copied on a CD or USB drive.

One thing you need to know about Webscrapebook is that you will need to look for a guide on how to install it. the link for it above is for GitHub; you will need to download and install it on your Firefox in other to use it.

WebWhacker

The WebWhacker 5.0 website download is the last on our list. This software has been around for a while, and a good number of Internet users have used it to convert websites into local sites browsable offline.

This tool comes with some advanced features, including duplicating the directory structure of a website, broken link finder, and filtering useless information in other to save disk space, among others. The tool is not free – it comes with a price tag of $50 but has a free trial you can make use of.

Conclusion

Looking at the list above, you can see that there are many options available to you if you want to download a website and have it locally available on other to access it offline or send it to other users to access it without access to the Internet.

While they all do the same thing, the feature that comes with each differs, and as such, the choice you will make will depend on that.

Source: https://www.bestproxyreviews.com/website-downloader-copier

DEV Community: MarianhBurnsk

Bad Bot 101: What is it & How to Detect and Block Bad Bots?

What is an Internet Bot?

What Makes a Bot a Bad Bot?

Good Bots Vs. Bad Bots

Types of Bad Bots

Traffic Bot

Spam Bots

Web Scrapers

Botnets

Checkout Bots

Effects of Bad Bots

Bots Contaminate your Engagement Data

Slows Down Performance

Steal Data

Increase Server Running Cost

How to Detect Bad Bots

Unusual Spike in Traffic

Server Performance is Affected Unexpectedly

Junk Activities and Content Posting

Request Header Inspection

How to Block Bad Bots

Set IP Address Request Limits

Make Use of Captcha Service

Block Unknown Browsers

Conclusion

How to Get the Best Nike Proxies

1. Smartproxy

2. Stormproxies

3. Icedout Proxies

4. Microleaves

Free Web Scraping Software & Extension for Non-programmers

What is a Web Scraper?

Top 10 Free Web Scrapers

Conclusion

Paid Proxies vs. Free Proxies

What are free proxies?

What are paid proxies?

Difference between the Free and Paid Proxies:

When should free proxies be used?

When should paid proxies be used?

15 Best Website Downloaders & Website Copier – Save website locally to read offline

What are Website Downloaders?

Top Website Downloader in the Market