After news spread quickly last week that the data of 700 million LinkedIn users had reportedly been found for sale on the web, consumers soon learned that the alleged data breach was actually the result of scraping — something experts say is different from a breach and cannot easily avoided.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 NBC News | 2022-07-21 21:00:34 |  73,905 Views |
There is virtually nothing you can do to protect your privacy online
With a contentious history going back deep, data scraping (or web scraping) is essentially the automated collection of public data from websites on the Internet. While not always a bad thing depending on its use, scraping can pose privacy risks when it involves personal information.
"Everybody needs to realize that as soon as you turn on your phone, your data is going everywhere," Raffaele Mautone, CEO and founder of AaDya Security, a cybersecurity company that works with small to midsize businesses, told Lifewire in a phone interview. "I always tell people that, and they're shocked that somehow they can't protect their data."
According to Mautone, users often agree to give up rights to their data when they sign up for new accounts online — leaving the data open to automated scraping programs that collect it, sometimes to companies that then sell it or use it for marketing.
