How to Stay Anonymous While Harvesting Data Online?

Ruby McKenzie
6 Min Read

It’s never a good idea to have your IP showing when scraping for online data. The servers will recognize the IP and prevent you from gathering any data and block your IP address. It’s not good for you since your goal is to scrape data online.

A perfect method to avoid getting your IP blocked is hiding it and staying anonymous. That way, the server won’t be able to block you due to not knowing where you are sending the requests from.

Using different tricks is recommended here, and that’s also what our guide is all about. If you are interested to learn more, make sure to continue reading our guide!

The IP address plays an important role

You probably don’t realize how vital the IP address is for scraping. Easily-detectable IP addresses are not suitable for scraping. It will lead to an IP block sooner or later when the server recognizes a potential threat to its data. It simply wishes to protect server data.

Using a backconnect proxy to hide your IP address is recommended when scraping. That will enable you to scrape without the website detecting many requests from the same IP address. Usually, the number of requests leads to a permanent IP ban, and scraping sends quite a number of them.

How using the same IP address gets you blocked

In simplest terms, the same IP address is almost guaranteed to get you blocked. Accessing the same website from one IP address implies sending data-collection requests from that exact address.

The website can recognize it as a potential threat, and it will block you from accessing it, which also blocks all the data from it.

We highly recommend using something else when accessing data on a website to avoid getting banned. There are some things you can do.

Rotate your IP address

By rotating your IP address, you will not be sending multiple requests from the same address at all times. It will “confuse” the website, so to say, and you’ll be able to continue scraping.

A pool of IP addresses will be interchanged between them after certain intervals when gathering data. As soon as the ISP connection becomes active, an IP address is automatically attached from a pool of IP addresses, making the connection secure and safe for scraping.

Use backconnect proxies

You can use backconnect proxies to access the scraping data without any issues. The process is pretty simple – a proxy server is employed that uses a pool of residential IP addresses. You can choose your locations, and the website won’t susYou can use backconnect proxies to access the scraping data without any issues. The process is pretty simple – a proxy server is employed that uses a pool of residential IP addresses. You can choose your locations, and the website won’t suspect you.

Arguably the safest and fastest method of scraping is via the backconnect proxies. Most people prefer using this method to anything else since it provides excellent results.

With a good backconnect proxy, you’ll be able to scrape much faster as well. The response time will be faster, meaning that you will collect data more effectively. Think about this one before you decide on the perfect scraping method.

Use an API

API is an abbreviation for Application Programming Interface, and it is used for safe scraping. It is a connection between two applications that allows them to “talk to one another”.

Using an API will allow you to circumvent the IP address recognition process. You will have a program that will communicate with the server instead of your IP address and collect data from it. It’s yet another secure method of collecting scraping data.

Don’t do image scraping

Even though it’s not difficult to scrape images, you shouldn’t do that. Your goal is to collect SEO data about keywords and not about images.

Images also have large amounts of data, and you will need a lot of time to scrape them properly. Keywords pale in comparison when it comes to data amounts you will need to scrape.

Scraping images can also come with several problems, and you might not get your desired results, which is definitely not something you would want to happen. You will receive the best results if you “stick” with SEO data and not images.

Conclusion

Hiding your IP address is a crucial factor for successful scraping. You won’t be able to scrape anything if you don’t remain anonymous on the internet. The server will simply block and ban your IP address. To avoid that, you can attempt to rotate your IP address, use a backconnect proxy, or use an API.

It’s up to you to decide which method you’ll use, but we can guarantee that everything we have mentioned will be good enough for your needs. Good luck!

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