How to Collect Data on the Internet Without Using Proxy Servers

Web scraping, or data collection, can be used to extract a wide variety of data—from products and prices to public records. There are services that can collect data for you, tools you can run from your desktop, or those you run from a server. All these tools can be used with or without proxies, and we will explore the different options.

What are the advantages of data collection without proxies?

If you need to collect a small amount of data where IP blocking is unlikely to be a problem, proxy servers can be slower to use and incur additional costs.

There are small web scraping operations that can be safely performed without proxies, such as collecting structured data from a single URL at a time.

Let's look at how you can use web scraping tools without proxies.

Using Your Own IP Address

You can probably collect a small amount of data using your own IP address with a data collection tool without being blocked.

However, keep in mind that if the site identifies you and detects that you are collecting publicly available data, you may end up on a blacklist and no longer be able to collect data from the site using your IP address.

Slowing down the data collection rate is both ethical and less risky. You can collect data without affecting the performance and speed of the site for other users. Scrapers can be detected by high download speed or unusual traffic, by performing repetitive tasks on the site, and by 'honeypot' links—links that are invisible to regular users but can be seen by scrapers.

Website owners typically block bots and scrapers to optimize server load. By making your activity appear more 'human-like,' you can avoid being flagged and ultimately blocked.

Hiding Your IP Address

Using privacy tools like Tor to mask your IP address makes it technically possible to collect data from the internet and avoid having your IP blocked.

However, keep in mind that while this may work, tools like Tor are not designed for data collection or automation. The Tor network has about 20,000 IP addresses, all of which are labeled and identifiable. Scraping through the Tor network can cause exit nodes to be blocked by websites, preventing other Tor users from visiting the site.

IP address hiding tools can also be slow because they route traffic through several different nodes before reaching the site, and IP addresses can also be blocked by sites that detect multiple requests from a single IP.

Rotating User Agents

A user agent is a part of the HTTP request that tells the server which browser is being used. A unique user agent is inherent to each browser, and if you consistently use the same user agent to request access, the site may use it to identify you as a scraper.

Most popular browsers allow you to change the user agent. You can create a list of user agent strings from popular browsers or use a tool to automatically rotate the user agent while mimicking known crawlers, such as Googlebot.

This allows you to hide the fact that you are a scraper. That means you can collect the same data that Google sees, or view the site as a mobile user would.

By itself, this does not prevent being banned by the server, but it is another useful way to get the most out of your tools when rate-limiting your hits to the server.

Through a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

A Virtual Private Network allows you to hide your identity online and is often used to access geo-restricted content. A VPN works by routing all traffic, whether from a browser or a background application, through a remote server and hiding your IP address.

Most VPNs encrypt your traffic, providing anonymity, security, and preventing blocking and censorship. Thus, you are no longer subject to website tracking and cannot be identified.

Due to the encryption process, VPN traffic can be slow. Additionally, VPNs are not designed for large-scale web data collection, so they are most often used by individuals who want privacy online or to access geo-restricted content.

Manual data collection from a site is very convenient if you don't want anyone to know who is collecting data. Without proxy servers, this is a limitation because you are using only one IP address, and your VPN may be banned or rate-limited.

Using a Headless Browser

A headless browser is a browser without a graphical user interface that does not display on desktop computers and other platforms. Google created a headless Chrome browser called Puppeteer, and there are other options such as Selenium and PhantomJS.

They help you stay undetected during web scraping and also automate the process via a command-line interface, handling more pages at once because websites don't need to be rendered. The only drawback is that such browsers consume a lot of RAM, CPU, and bandwidth, so this option is only suitable for those with a powerful system.

Using headless browsers requires an understanding of JavaScript to write scripts, but on the other hand, headless browsers are well-suited for scraping content rendered in JavaScript code that would otherwise be unavailable through the raw HTML server response.

Collecting Data from the Internet Using Proxy Servers

As we have shown, there is no alternative to using proxy servers for large-scale data collection on the internet. All these methods have serious limitations and should be avoided if you are serious about efficiently collecting large amounts of accurate data.

Using a proxy network reduces the chance of being banned, blocked, or deceived when collecting data. You can choose the location or device from which the request originates, which is convenient for collecting data from any type of site. Additionally, this method is much faster and allows you to collect unlimited data.