Why is it not recommended to use a free agent when scraping data

In the process of crawling data, frequent visits to the website may lead to the same IP being blocked or verified by the website, which will hinder the normal collection of data. To circumvent this problem, many crawlers use proxy IP addresses instead of their real IP addresses to reduce the chance of being blocked by rotating proxy IP addresses. Currently, there are a large number of proxy IP options available on the web, including both free and paid types. However, many professional crawlers and data collectors do not recommend using free agents for data scraping because of the following two main problems with free agents:

1. Free IP is overused

Since free agents are free and open to all users, they attract a lot of people, especially those who are unwilling or unable to pay the fee. This leads to a problem: the same free proxy IP can be used by many users at the same time. Especially in some popular free proxy sites or services, the number of users will be larger, resulting in excessive load on the proxy IP.

When multiple users are scraping data on a free agent at the same time, the load on the proxy server becomes very high. Due to the limited hardware resources and bandwidth of the proxy server, excessive load will cause the performance of the proxy server to decline, and may even cause it to crash or fail to respond to requests properly. In this case, the user's data capture request is likely to be not timely response, resulting in a greatly reduced success rate of data collection.

①The advantages and disadvantages of dynamic IP versus sta

In addition, due to the excessive use of free proxy IP, their stability and reliability can also be affected. Frequent requests can cause the free proxy IP to change frequently, which means that an IP address may be used by multiple users in a short period of time. This unstable IP switching may lead to intermittent data acquisition, which in turn affects the coherence of the entire data acquisition task.

2, free agent security is low

Because free agents are publicly available, their quality and safety are often not adequately guaranteed and vetted. As a result, some free agents may have malicious behavior, which brings security risks and privacy disclosure risks to users.

First, some free agents may record users' browsing habits and online behavior, and such data may be used to track users' behaviors and interests for targeted advertising or other commercial purposes. When users use these free agents, their personal privacy may be leaked, and may even lead to the violation of users' privacy rights.

Secondly, some malicious free agents may steal users' personal information, such as account passwords, bank card information and other sensitive data. Such behavior seriously threatens the security of the user's property and may cause the user to suffer economic losses.

In addition, some free agents may also place ads or malware, so that users may be subjected to unnecessary advertising harassment when using the agent, or at risk of malware infection. This will not only interfere with the user's normal Internet experience, but may also lead to damage to the user's computer system or data loss.

②Issues to consider when selecting a proxy IP for network cra

Finally, because free agents are publicly offered, they are usually not strictly verified and screened, so their stability and reliability are difficult to guarantee. This means that free agents may change IP addresses frequently, resulting in frequent loss of connection for users during data capture, which in turn affects the consistency and efficiency of data collection.

To sum up, while free proxies provide free access, using them in the process of data scraping can lead to many problems. Frequent use of free agents is likely to be banned by the website, and its security and stability can not be guaranteed, easy to cause security risks. In contrast, paid agents, while requiring a certain fee, provide a more stable and secure service and are a better choice for professional crawlers and data harvesters. Therefore, in order to ensure the smooth progress of data collection and the privacy of users, it is not recommended to use free agents when grabbing data.