4 ms·
Nope, not that I've seen -- if the browser gets the data, anyone can get the data. You can make it more difficult, and the defenses I've seen vary based on the
by hampelm 5y ago
Nope, not that I've seen -- if the browser gets the data, anyone can get the data. You can make it more difficult, and the defenses I've seen vary based on the type of data. Here are a few:
- Limit the geography of the sample
- Use raster tiles at far zooms and switch to vector at close zooms for interactivity. Combine this with a limit on the number of tiles an unauthenticated user can consume to make mass downloading more difficult.
- Have data that changes frequently enough that a one-time scrape decreases in value pretty quickly
- Only share the real value at scale with authenticated customers. The real value might be the geometries or the attributes or the combo pack.
- Trust that most serious customers will prefer to pay to work with you rather than abscond with the data. Those that are willing to put work into scraping it probably won't pay anyways
Really, the last point is the key. You want to have a data product where most consumers want to create a legitimate business relationship with you. My opinion is if your potential customers don't fit in this bucket, there likely are deeper concerns, and if most do, you'll be fine! Aka sweat getting the first customer rather than blocking the first scraper.
- hampelm 5y agoIf you really want to go hog wild, you could use a system where tokens with a short expiry are used to authenticate requests even when users aren't logged in. You'd combine that with rate limits + IP-level bans for when active or expired tokens are overused. I would say that's total overkill for 99% of services though.
- BbzzbB 5y agoThank you for the suggestions, especially that last one - I may be "paranoid" considering the target audience are professionals, I really should focus on the product rather than the fence (besides some basic defense so the points aren't in plain JSON).