CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@olbohlen @HunterZ @osm_tech the complexity of setting up defenses for this is regrettable

@olbohlen @HunterZ @osm_tech sad to hear that! It's wild though, you can sign up for a scraper proxy service in minutes. They're legal, inexpensive, and easy to use. Admins who assume scrapers are using their own machines that inauthentic traffic will come from a few IP addresses are sadly living in the past.

@tehstu @HunterZ @osm_tech anything your pihole would let you request, it'd let the scraper request. If the scraper wanted to scrape some ads from another network it might get blocked, I guess.

@HunterZ @osm_tech this is actually quite common. Mobile advertising SDKs for games, background apps, etc include residential scraping proxy functionality that they can sell to the highest bidder, and then when scrapers want to avoid restrictions they can pay a fraction of a penny to send their requests via your phone. Millions of people use apps with this built in and have no idea. Most websites don't want to ban the residential scrapers because it can hurt growth.