I don't have an example to showcase, but I have a general question. If a website provides its data open and free, but to download them you need to fill a captcha, can I use an automatic way to auto fill the questions and download the data I want?
1 Answer
It might be consider illegal. Autofilling captcha is a blackhat toolbox and in most of the cases you should avoid it. The best thing you can do is read the "term of uses" of the site and if you cannot find anything there, then you can always contact with them and ask for a certain reason to send you the data directly.
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1I concur with Anastasios. The captcha implies the intent to prevent scrapping of the website by a bot. I too would recommend attempting to contact the data owner for alternate access method that can be automated, such as FTP. Jan 10, 2014 at 18:30