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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

You don’t need specific permission to scrape data.

Nope. You don't need permission to scrape publicly accessible data, and that's only on the legal side of things. Data behind any kind of login is not fair game. Apple also has rules against use of any scraped data you aren't explicitly authorized to access.

Apple is of course fine to prohibit whatever they desire for appearing in their store, but scrapping is a different issue.

Copyright etc could restrict copying information displayed on a website, but if someone can legally write down information via pen and paper they can see then they can scrape it. The process being automation doesn’t inherently matter.

If it’s your employers you do

If it’s an app on apples App Store you do

Source? The courts have consistently ruled the other way on the question of scraping.

If you then share confidential information with third parties your employer may (or may not) have a case.

App screenshot on the appstore shows a list of names associated with a rota, presumably crew member names scraped from the airlines' password-protected crew portal.

It's not especially surprising airlines don't want unauthorised third party apps accessing and storing personal data from their intranets, even if the third party developer is very ethical about not leaking it to people without passwords and makes beautiful UX

It doesn't really matter if the airlines want them to scrape or not; it is their right to scrape.

They don't have a right to scrape password protected personal data off an intranet, and AA also have the right to attempt to block an app or its scrapers regardless of whether the scraping is legal or not.

In this context blocking scrappers is probably legal for AA. However it might be illegal in other contexts, such as if there are any concerns around disability.

All the rulings here have enforced employers rights to their data. The google engineer using their login to scrape users private emails and then running it through a third party platform would be fired.

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