Is web scraping ok?

[rogue06]

His rum. And his bacon.

certain not all of his marbles.

[firstfloor]

Stuff like this tells us where we are on the road to disaster. Feel free to touch the brakes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/clima...t-vital-river/

[Juvenal]

From the transcript:

This thing is a stalker's wet dream, and the tech needed to build it is off-the-shelf. If China didn't have it before it hit the NY Times, it does now.

This guy is barely a nerd, with a programming background as deep as needed to build a facebook app to add Trump's hair to your profile pic. Add a pic webscraper to an AI learning algorithm, and this will pop out. It doesn't need full face profiles. It doesn't need high res. And it's got VC backers who want to release it to the public, big guys, like Peter Thiel, the guy who backed Hulk Hogan in taking down Gawker.

[Sparko]

From the transcript:

This thing is a stalker's wet dream, and the tech needed to build it is off-the-shelf. If China didn't have it before it hit the NY Times, it does now.

This guy is barely a nerd, with a programming background as deep as needed to build a facebook app to add Trump's hair to your profile pic. Add a pic webscraper to an AI learning algorithm, and this will pop out. It doesn't need full face profiles. It doesn't need high res. And it's got VC backers who want to release it to the public, big guys, like Peter Thiel, the guy who backed Hulk Hogan in taking down Gawker.

The really scary thing is you can pretty much do this now, albeit without the facial recognition. You can buy background checks on people, All you need is a name or email address. It will come back with their address, previous addresses, relatives, any arrests, social media links, etc.

And most people are idiots when it comes to security. Rather than locking down their facebook/instagram pages so only friends can view their posts (or even a list of their friends) people post everything to "public" even their most private stuff. Not sure if it is because they are just ignorant, or because they want to be famous and go viral with one of their posts or videos.