Legality of Email Scrapers
- Thread starter dsipal
- Start date
christoss1959
Senior Member
- Nov 25, 2010
- 896
- 1,176
Hi,
Since I wrote a free email scraper (if interested check my sig) I checked around on this and the short answer is "It depends on your country".
For example in UK (where I used to live at the time) it is not illegal to scrap email addresses but it is illegal to contact people by emails obtained using automated means i.e. email scrapers. A similar rule applies in the USA (as far as I know).
So it basically depends on your country and on the scale you are doing this. For example the only case I know in the USA where someone was prosecuted for email spaming was 'The spam king' who was sending 10 million emails per day! (at times more than 100 emails for each user) I have trouble believing that you would get arrested for sending 100-1000 emails to 1 email per address.
Also I heard from a lawyer that such rules may have "windows" that allow you to outsource the practice (of sending the emails) to a country with no such rules apply and not being liable for prosecution (however I am not lawyer so I cannot confirm that).
Hope that helps,
Christos
Since I wrote a free email scraper (if interested check my sig) I checked around on this and the short answer is "It depends on your country".
For example in UK (where I used to live at the time) it is not illegal to scrap email addresses but it is illegal to contact people by emails obtained using automated means i.e. email scrapers. A similar rule applies in the USA (as far as I know).
So it basically depends on your country and on the scale you are doing this. For example the only case I know in the USA where someone was prosecuted for email spaming was 'The spam king' who was sending 10 million emails per day! (at times more than 100 emails for each user) I have trouble believing that you would get arrested for sending 100-1000 emails to 1 email per address.
Also I heard from a lawyer that such rules may have "windows" that allow you to outsource the practice (of sending the emails) to a country with no such rules apply and not being liable for prosecution (however I am not lawyer so I cannot confirm that).
Hope that helps,
Christos
InternetMaster
Junior Member
- Oct 22, 2011
- 143
- 62
By scraping sites you will get a bunch of email traps so called "honeypots".
So, trust me, scraping is a bad idea if you don't know what you are doing.
So, trust me, scraping is a bad idea if you don't know what you are doing.
ILoveCSharp
Regular Member
- Nov 2, 2011
- 368
- 45
jascoken
Senior Member
- Nov 1, 2010
- 1,135
- 753
Email spam is a major problem and headache for ISP's. You wouldn't believe the amount of data/server time it takes up...
So, you can bet that as privacy laws get tighter, there will be growing pressure from the commercial side to stem the increase in spam.
It's a highly volatile area in UK law, and it's one area that even as a black-hatter I would avoid.
So, you can bet that as privacy laws get tighter, there will be growing pressure from the commercial side to stem the increase in spam.
It's a highly volatile area in UK law, and it's one area that even as a black-hatter I would avoid.