If you‘ve ever tried your hand at web scraping, you‘ve likely run into a frustrating roadblock – getting your IP address banned and blocked from accessing a website. It‘s a common problem that can grind your data gathering to a halt.
But don‘t worry, there are steps you can take to both avoid IP bans in the first place and overcome them if they do occur. In this post, we‘ll walk through everything you need to know to keep your web scraping running smoothly.
Understanding IP Bans
First, let‘s clarify what an IP ban actually is. An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a unique identifier assigned to each device connected to the internet. Websites can track and log the IP addresses that access them.
If a site detects suspicious or abusive behavior from a certain IP, such as an extremely high volume of requests in a short time period, it may ban or block that IP from accessing it further. This is known as an IP ban or IP block.
IP bans are a way for websites to protect themselves from malicious attacks, spam, and abuse of their servers and resources. But they can also be triggered by web scraping activity if the scraper is not well-behaved.
Some common reasons an IP may be banned due to scraping include:
- Making a very large number of requests in a short time window
- Not respecting the robots.txt file that outlines scraping permissions
- Not identifying as a scraper in the user agent string
- Using an IP that has already been flagged and blacklisted
While frustrating, IP bans are understandable from the website‘s perspective. Unlimited scraping can overwhelm a site‘s servers, slow down performance for real users, and cost money in computing resources.
But as a web scraper, getting banned can really throw a wrench in your data gathering. So what can you do to prevent bans and keep collecting the information you need?
How to Avoid Getting Your IP Banned
As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The best way to handle IP bans is to avoid them altogether through responsible scraping practices.
Here are some tips to minimize the risk of your scraper getting banned:
Respect Robots.txt
Most websites have a robots.txt file in their root directory that specifies what scrapers and bots are allowed to do. It might restrict certain user agents, prohibit scraping of specific pages, or limit crawl rate.
Always check the robots.txt and comply with its directives. Ignoring it is not only rude, but makes it much more likely your scraper will be banned. You can parse robots.txt files using Python libraries like robotparser.
Throttle Request Frequency
Limit how often your scraper makes requests to a reasonable rate. Sending requests too rapidly is a surefire way to get banned. A good rule of thumb is to wait at least 10-15 seconds between requests, and ideally a minute or more.
You can use Python‘s time.sleep() function to pause your scraper between requests:
import time
def scrape_page(url):
# Make request and parse page here
time.sleep(20) # Pause for 20 seconds before next requestUse Rotating Proxies and User Agents
Sending all your requests from one IP and user agent makes your scraper easy to detect. Instead, spread requests across many different IPs and agents.
There are both free and paid proxy services you can use, such as Broken Silenze and Smartproxy. Rotating user agents is easily done with the fake-useragent Python package.
from fake_useragent import UserAgent
import requests
ua = UserAgent()
def scrape_page(url):
headers = {‘User-Agent‘: ua.random}
proxies = {
# Proxy IPs would go here
}
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, proxies=proxies)Handle Errors Gracefully
Well-behaved scrapers should handle HTTP errors properly and not keep battering a server with requests when something is wrong.
If you get a 403 Forbidden or 429 Too Many Requests response, don‘t just ignore it. Either pause the scraper or kill it entirely. Failure to do so will almost certainly lead to your IP being banned.
What to Do If Your IP Does Get Banned
So you‘ve taken precautions but the inevitable still happened – your scraper‘s IP address got banned. Don‘t panic, there are still some tactics you can use to work around the problem.
Proxy Rotation
The simplest solution is to switch to a new proxy IP address that isn‘t banned. If you‘re already using proxies, rotate to an address you haven‘t used on that domain before.
However, some sites are wise to this tactic and maintain blacklists of known proxy IPs. In that case, you‘ll need to obtain IPs that aren‘t on their blacklist, which can be challenging. Look for proxy providers that offer virgin or dedicated rotating proxies.
VPNs
Virtual Private Networks can be another way to mask your real IP address. By tunneling through the VPN, your requests will come from the VPN‘s IP rather than your own.
Many VPN services like NordVPN offer dedicated IP addresses which reduce the chance of the IP being already blacklisted. Using a reliable paid VPN service is recommended over free VPNs.
Change Internet Service Provider
Since your IP is assigned by your ISP, switching to a different ISP is another way to get a new IP address. However, this isn‘t generally practical for most as a scraping solution.
MAC Address Spoofing
For advanced users, spoofing your Media Access Control (MAC) address can sometimes trick sites into thinking you‘re connecting from a different device.
Each network interface has a unique MAC address. Some websites track both IP and MAC addresses, so changing your IP alone may not be enough if you‘ve been banned.
Changing your MAC address varies by operating system. Here is an example for macOS:
# Disable the network interface
sudo ifconfig en0 down
# Change the MAC
sudo ifconfig en0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
# Re-enable the interface
sudo ifconfig en0 upUse a Headless Browser
For stubborn sites, you may need to go a step beyond simple requests and use a full headless browser like Puppeteer.
Since headless browsers more closely mimic human users, they‘re less likely to get banned than a simple Python script. The tradeoff is they use more computing resources and are slower than sending direct requests.
Captcha Solving Services
Some websites employ CAPTCHAs to check if a client is a human or bot. If you encounter a CAPTCHA while scraping, you‘ll either need to solve it manually or use a CAPTCHA solving service.
Services like 2Captcha and Death by Captcha provide APIs to automate solving reCAPTCHAs and other CAPTCHA types. However, they can add significant expense and overhead to your scraping process.
Scraping as a Service
If you want to avoid dealing with proxies, CAPTCHAs and IP bans altogether, you can outsource your scraping to a third-party service. Companies like Scrapinghub, ParseHub, and ScrapingBee handle the details of scraping for you.
For a fee, you simply provide the target URLs and they return the data. This can save substantial time and let you focus on working with the data rather than gathering it.
The Ethics of Circumventing IP Bans
Now you know a variety of methods to prevent and overcome IP bans. But the question remains – just because you can do something, should you?
Circumventing a ban could be considered an unauthorized access attempt from the website‘s point of view. In some jurisdictions, this may be illegal.
It‘s a bit of a grey area – you‘re not "hacking" in the sense of exploiting a vulnerability, but you are knowingly accessing a site that has tried to block you. The site could potentially argue this is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The ethical thing is to respect a website‘s policies and terms of service. If a site prohibits scraping in its ToS, think very carefully about whether you should scrape it at all, let alone try to circumvent any IP bans you encounter.
Some scraping is necessary for search engines to function and for researchers to gather data in the public interest. But avoid scraping in a way that harms a website‘s operation or goes against the wishes of its owner.
When in doubt, try to get permission to scrape from the site owner. Some sites offer APIs that allow you to access data in an approved way without the need for scraping.
The Bottom Line
Getting your IP address banned can put a real damper on your web scraping projects. But by following responsible scraping practices, you can minimize the chances of IP blocks occurring.
If you do find yourself banned, there are still avenues to successfully continue your scraping, including rotating proxies, VPNs, and outsourcing to scraping services.
However, always respect a website‘s terms of service and consider the ethics before attempting to circumvent a ban. In some cases, it may be necessary to move on and find an alternative data source.
With the smart strategies outlined here, you should be able to gather the public web data you need while avoiding those pesky IP bans. Just remember to always scrape responsibly. Happy scraping!
