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If I were to web crawl supermarkets' websites and retrieve info and create a comparison tool for sale would that be illegal?

Mark Silverberg
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user3236
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  • I would highly suggest reading this Quora post on the topic: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-legality-of-web-scraping – Mark Silverberg Jul 16 '14 at 15:49
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    @MarkSilverberg : the data can't be copywritted, if they try to block you, and you attempt to circumvent the block, you might be prosecuted. (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-service-not-crime-bypassing ; http://lifehacker.com/5901773/breaking-a-terms-of-service-isnt-necessarily-a-crime ) ... but even if it's considered legal, that doesn't mean that a district attorney won't push for prosecution. My suggestion is that if they have a robots.txt or AUP, don't do it. – Joe Jul 16 '14 at 18:54

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In the UK the Computer Misuse Act from 1990 (section 1) states that it is an offence to access a computer where:

  • the access to the data is unauthorised
  • the offender knows that it is unauthorised

This may extend to web scraping because, in some circumstances, you are accessing the website intending to use the data in a way that is not authorised by the website owner.

Thus, the conservative and recommended way is to ask the owner for permission.

Ulrich
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