Office for Data Protection issues guidelines to tackle data scrapers

Wednesday 30 October 2024

Data protection is working with 16 other authorities from across the globe, and some of the worlds largest social media companies, in an effort to help prevent the unauthorised scraping of data.

It comes as concerns grow about mass scraping, including being used to support artificial intelligence systems.

Data Scraping refers to the downloading of private data from the internet, and then storing it or using elsewhere online.  This includes social media platforms and other websites that host publicly accessible personal information.

In a joint statement released last year, authorities called for industry leaders to identify and implement controls to protect against, monitor for, and respond to, data scraping activities on their platforms.

Now the ODPA and it’s affiliates have produced a new set of guidelines to help companies protect users’ data from this unlawful scraping. 

They include:

• Comply with privacy and data protection laws when using personal information, including from their own platforms, to develop artificial intelligence (AI) large language models; 

• Deploy a combination of safeguarding measures and regularly review and update them to keep pace with advances in scraping techniques and technologies. 

• Ensure that permissible data scraping for commercial or socially beneficial purposes is done lawfully and in accordance with strict contractual terms.

Bailiwick Data Protection Commissioner, Brent Homan, said “The unauthorised scraping of data presents a significant global risk to the privacy rights individuals around the world. Through this joint action, we have engaged positively with industry towards setting clear expectations and elevating security safeguards.”