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Important Craiglist Case: Criminal / Civil Liability for Using a Proxy

by kindsvater
3 replies
An important federal order was just issued in California you should pay attention to. Although it involves Craigslist the issues are important for website owners and many marketers banned from various sites.

A marketing aggregator was scraping ads from Craiglist, and in response Craigslist sent a cease and desist letter prohibiting any access to the website. Craigslist also created an IP block to physically prohibit the scraping. The aggregator then used a proxy to keep scraping.

Craigslist then filed a lawsuit, invoking both federal and California law. This is important: the California statute invokes both civil claims and criminal liability, damages, the recovery of attorneys fees, and the forfeiture of your computer. Simply - massive liability. Although this order is in a civil case, don't discount the additional possibility of criminal prosecution

The court held even though Craigslist is publicly accessible, it is within its rights to prohibit access to its website. Continuing to access a site by changing your IP with a proxy subjects yourself to a lawsuit, a potentially devastating judgment, and possible criminal prosecution.

Although Craigslist took two actions (1) cease and desist letter and (2) IP block, the cease and desist letter would be sufficient to prohibit access to the site. Using a proxy to evade the IP block proved the company was aware of the ban and intentionally took action to access the site anyway.

Court opinion here: http://internetmarketinglawcenter.com/cfaa.pdf

Lessons:

If you own a website and want to ban someone, send them a message expressly prohibiting their further access to your website for any reason. If feasible, also IP block the banned person. This can easily be done in the cpanel admin area available for many websites.

If you have been banned and told you cannot access a site, don't access the site. If the website is based in California (Google, Apple, Facebook, Craigslist, Twitter, and a zillion silicon-valley based sites) the stakes are particularly high.

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#case #civil #craiglist #criminal #important #liability #proxy
  • Profile picture of the author USA
    That's why I use Tor, plus several proxies, to conduct data mining operations.

    The company in question should have never "scraped" craigslist from their own IP in the first place.

    Secondly, you can NEVER trust readily available commercial applications for such delicate tasks. Nor can you trust most free or paid proxies for that matter. Most are actually owned and or run by spooks and or governments, believe it or not.

    If I wanted to do this (I wouldn't), I would write all of my own code (which I can and do for most of my work), and use a UNIX variant operating system like pc-bsd (this is my primary OS), which I would run virtually from a CDROM drive (never install it on a hard drive), and connect to the Internet through a public (open) wi-fi connection for this type of job. This way, you would never leave an electronic signature or footprint of your computer or yourself.

    You can even run this type of operating system in a computer that does not even have a hard drive installed by the way since it boots, and installs directly from the CDROM drive into RAM.

    Granted, most people/companies don't have the skill sets to perform the aforementioned tasks, but there are individuals, and organizations which offer these types of services for data collection. I used to work for a government entity in this capacity.

    I do not condone any type of illegal activity whatsoever, and I employ only "white hat" methods in all of my Internet based businesses. I just want people to know that there are legitimate ways to protect your anonymity, and your rights to privacy on the Internet.
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    I don't condone this type of behavior but what if the offending company outsources scraping to India / China / Russia and those guys use proxies?
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    • Profile picture of the author USA
      Originally Posted by writeaway View Post

      I don't condone this type of behavior but what if the offending company outsources scraping to India / China / Russia and those guys use proxies?

      Many companies do just that. There are several operations that are behind the former "Iron Curtain", who sell this type of service to some of the biggest corporations in the world. They are untouchable by Interpol and operate freely by paying off their own government officials.
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