A non-resident of Australia who wants to access content like SBS, Foxtel, and Australia Netflix with proxies must decide between paid or free services. Free proxy servers offer a limited degree of security and anonymity coupled with a high level of ads. In contrast, paid proxies charge on a per-use basis but provide multiple layers of security and anonymity. Additionally, they have a kill switch to instantly break the connection when a proxy server develops technical glitches.
Should You Use Unpaid Proxies for Website Scraping?
Free proxies don’t meet the security and anonymity standards required for serious web scraping. Web scrapers send many requests per second, and a free proxy provider might not offer enough IP addresses and high uptime to process such activities. In addition, a free proxy may lack the high-end technologies needed to bypass anti-scraping CAPTCHAs and geo-blocks.
Lastly, scraping Australian websites with a free proxy is a mistake that can lead to legal and financial threats. If you are still contemplating the use of a free proxy for scraping Australian websites, the following content will change your mind.
Are You Ready for Legal Battles?
The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) prohibits you from data scraping copyrighted work, including portraits, songs, novels, paintings, and poetry. The copyright law also gives artists and content creators the right to protect their content against scraping through setting terms and conditions. Breaching them when scraping data online can lead to court trials and penalties.
To scrape Australian websites anonymously and avoid legal battles, you need high-quality and extra-secure proxies. Unfortunately, free proxies are prone to failing and revealing your identity. Keep your data scraping activities secure and anonymous with premium rotating datacenter or residential proxies from top-tier providers.
Your Time Is Precious
Even if you’re lucky to find secure and reliable free proxies for data scraping, you won’t enjoy high uptimes and speedy connections. Free proxy servers don’t have configurations to respond to requests swiftly, so they take longer to process website scraping requests. The longer they take to complete a search request, the less data you’ll scrape within a minute, and the more time you’ll take to harvest enough data.
Contrariwise, top-tier residential Australia proxies contain settings to expeditiously act on web scraping requests. They provide uptimes of 99.9%, along with high-speed connections, to enable you to scrape multiple websites per minute and harvest lots of data within the least time possible.
CAPTCHAs Will Slow You Down
Websites use more advanced CAPTCHAs with real-world images and texts to protect themselves against malicious access and attacks. When your scraping bot sends multiple requests within a short time, it’ll trigger CAPTCHAs. Bots don’t have the intelligence to respond to this security measure, irrespective of how simple humans find them to be. Therefore, once your site scraping bot comes across a CAPTCHA, it’ll stop its activities.
Cost-free proxies will likely trigger CAPTCHAs because they use shared IP addresses. Premium proxy services have a large pool of IP addresses on rotation, ensuring the website you’re scraping won’t detect any unusual activities. Therefore, you’ll rarely face such problems when gathering data from Australian websites using paid proxies.
Why Risk the Penalties?
According to a report by Distil Networks, companies lose 2% of their revenues due to irresponsible web scraping. Companies must stick by the Australian copyright law and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when gathering data; if they don’t, they are prone to paying penalties and legal claims. Other steps every business must take include adhering to contract agreements and avoiding copyright infringement and data misappropriation.
Unpaid proxies don’t safeguard you from legal and financial problems. In fact, they increase your chances of facing penalties. Pay-per-service proxies protect your online activities and keep your searches anonymous. Those tracking your online activities will never unveil your identity to use it in filing legal claims.
Conclusion
Using unpaid proxy servers to web scrape Australian websites will leave you with more problems to handle than benefits to enjoy. Free proxies not only increase your odds of losing revenues but also leave you at risk of battling serious legal claims and paying hefty fines. For simpler and faster website scraping activities, use premium Australian proxies with top-tier residential IP addresses.