Is scraping emails legal?

Is scraping Google legal?

After scraping, the only way to get the data you scraped is through Google's JSON API.

So, as long as you don't use a third-party JavaScript library that makes calls directly to Google's services, you're ok. On a side note: if you're scrapping, I would suggest you use an external service, like Yahoo! or Yandex (you can scrape for free) and make use of their APIs. They have very clean interfaces for scraping and they give you a lot of additional data.

Is scraping emails legal?

I just found out today that our company was recently hit with a pretty severe lawsuit from an ex-employee who claimed we have taken and/or shared his/her private medical records.

She claims we did so without her consent and without giving her any indication that such a thing was going to happen. Her entire claim is that she got the impression were going to share the records with our employers, and since her previous employer was paying her (and would find out about it if we didn't do it), she felt like she had no choice but to accept that what she was doing was acceptable by the law.

I'm not sure where I stand on the issue of scraping email addresses for mailing lists. The employee claims that were never told what were supposed to be sharing, and the way went about this was by having our IT group download all his/her private information off his/her work computer. But when we looked into his/her personal email address and discovered that he/she was on mailing lists for which were given permission to scrape his/her information (since it's for a non-work related mailing list) the information seemed more likely to be legal, depending on what we did after seeing it.

So in short, we wanted to know if there's anything we could be charged with by taking this information without his/her prior knowledge and asking him/her to take action that would make it difficult for us to get any of it back should this get reported to any of the email list organizers. At least based on the email addresses we saw, he/she seemed fairly open to what we might do with his/her private information so long as it was under legal restrictions.

The only real concern we had was whether or not we violated any HIPAA laws on account of the fact that this particular person's email was one that was used for private medical files, so it wasn't something that you could do freely on a mass scale. What are the different types of legal restrictions associated with someone's email information? And if we did go ahead and scrape it based on the information we'd gotten off his computer, are there any particular actions that we could have taken to protect ourselves legally? We couldn't see a difference between something done and someone given prior permission, or doing it on your own without prior permission.

Is web scraping stock data legal?

The SEC has fined stock-data providers millions of dollars for illegally copying and using information gleaned from the internet.

But are they breaking the law? Shares. A new kind of digital gold rush has swept through the financial markets: websites, data providers, and apps have launched in recent months to make money by selling the most accurate, latest, and up-to-the-minute stock data. These scrapers use Google and Bing to scrape quotes from trading platforms to provide them in real-time. Some apps have even gone so far as to use a website's API to gather data and post that too on social networks and email lists, bypassing the website itself and giving the public a sneak peek into the company's financials. Another app claims it provides 'the real-time stock data you need to understand what's going on in the market.'

But some data providers worry their efforts could violate US Securities laws which ban the sale or purchase of non-public company information and penalise those caught selling such information. The big questions: is it illegal? And can you get into trouble if you use an API for stock data? Can you sell stock data legally? In general, it is legal to sell publicly traded companies' financial statements, research, and company information provided that the information is available at no charge. This means that if a company charges money for such information, it is illegal. The government can fine or even jail an offender.

As an example of how this can work, when Microsoft published its earnings data, it was not illegal for people to copy and sell this data. The same company could still publish these earnings information on its own website. However, the government could still issue a fine or even jail the company if it was discovered that Microsoft employees had been copying and selling its earnings data.

Some data providers are worried about these SEC fines. The SEC has actually had its own share of stock data controversy in the past.5 million in 2025 for allowing Microsoft employees to look at financial information that was stored on a computer network accessible by the general public.