Company
Date Published
Author
Antonello Zanini
Word count
2594
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Proxycurl was a prominent LinkedIn web scraping service that was shut down following a federal lawsuit filed by LinkedIn, due to Proxycurl's unauthorized creation of fake accounts and scraping of millions of LinkedIn profiles, violating LinkedIn's User Agreement. The article discusses the legal implications of web scraping, emphasizing the importance of selecting compliant alternatives. It suggests Bright Data, Scrapingdog, and Nimble as top alternatives, highlighting their focus on scraping publicly available data via APIs without using fake accounts, which ensures legal and ethical compliance. Bright Data emerges as a standout choice due to its robust legal track record, ethical practices, and comprehensive LinkedIn data scraping tools, offering a reliable and scalable solution for businesses needing LinkedIn data. The article advises caution in choosing scraping services that may violate platform policies, underscoring the potential operational, reputational, and financial risks of neglecting proper legal due diligence.