Can I use Octoparse for free?

Is web scraping allowed on Facebook?

What is the Facebook business rules regarding web scraping? I mean, what are the legal issues with it? Is it allowed and if it is allowed, what are the requirements for getting permissions to do this? Thanks! You're not asking a question; you're asking to know whether you're allowed to use a particular technique to do something that you are doing anyway. Facebook can't stop you from scraping, but they can stop you from showing the results in public places. They will, of course, charge you. They might even tell you to stop.

It's unlikely that any of them would take a complaint from you seriously enough to investigate it. A few years ago, I was contacted by the company that administers the sites on which I used to scrape. I did some research and found that I could scrape the sites as I was doing now, but I could only scrape the sites from work (in my case, from home) and only in very specific circumstances.

Does Octoparse provide API?

The API is not public. As I mentioned before, it's built to be a free service to the community.

You can sign up for a free account and then make your own API calls. The API is not a single web server but several servers that are connected via HTTP. The way Octoparse works, you request a specific web server that is running on the machine. Octoparse checks if there is a server available that matches your request and it'll serve the page back to you.

When I started working on Octoparse, I didn't have any idea how Octoparse worked and I just made it work by requesting URLs with my browser. Over time, I learned more about Octoparse's workings and I'm now able to make API requests.

As for being public, there is no real definition for "public" in this case. Octoparse is a public open source project. I'd say "public" means "you can read and understand how it works", not "it's open to the public" or "everybody can access it".

Is Octoparse safe to use?

No, but I haven't found any other apps that are. If you do happen to find any other apps for Octoparse, or any other apps for Android at all, please let us know. (I will make an edit to this question to reflect that. Feel free to add other information if you think it's helpful.)

Octoparse uses the term "brute force" to describe its method of breaking passwords. Brute force cracking is a very old, and very insecure, password-cracking method. It was used in the early days of cracking, but is now completely insecure. It is not used by any reputable software cracking tools. In fact, the most commonly used software cracking tools - like John the Ripper - aren't even capable of brute-forcing passwords the way Octoparse does it. If you use Octoparse, be very careful that you don't allow your users to enter any common passwords into your program.

The only thing that is secure about Octoparse is the fact that it only works once. (Which also means it won't be able to crack as many accounts as some other software cracks). However, even if Octoparse gets cracked, it still can't access your users' data (as long as they're not using a cracked version of Octoparse). There are a lot of people who use Octoparse, and if it was ever cracked (which I highly doubt it will be), it will be a lot more expensive and difficult to do than just paying a password cracker.

If Octoparse gets cracked, the only way you can be sure it won't access your users' data is if you never allow any of them to enter any common passwords into your program. If you do, however, you will need to create your own copy of the cracked version, and update it every time the cracker updates their own version. There is a risk that they may have been found with data from your users (you can't be 100% sure).

Also, a friend of mine had a lot of problems with Octoparse when they were running it. The problem was that he used the same username and password combination on each of his accounts (which were all from different companies). The reason this is a problem is that, if you're going to use brute-force cracking to try to access one account, it won't matter whether you were successful or not.

Can I use Octoparse for free?

No, because Octoparse is a paid service. Why did you choose to build an app that will be hosted for users? Why not build it yourself? Because I don't want to manage this app. Octoparse helps me do everything but upload my data (because everything happens on my server). I also love the idea of being the first to know when your data is in the cloud.

How has building Octoparse helped your business? We got more clients! By far. Clients keep coming. This gives us time to work on more features and improve the product.

Do you need a database? No, your data isn't managed by me (but that's still great for all those "backup" features you'd have). Have you used Amazon Web Services or other cloud services? If that was an important requirement, I'd say we had nothing against using a "real" database. That would mean that we would also need some kind of authentication, which isn't a problem because of how our system works. I'm currently looking at the different databases to see which would be the best fit for Octoparse.

Why does Octoparse cost money? We have customers outside of the U., and we thought we'd like to start building a model where we offer the premium features worldwide. You can pay whatever price you think is fair for that service. So far, we've been pricing it per-month, but that would be easy to change in the future.

Is there a business model behind Octoparse? Our business model isn't about making money. We are making a tool that people are using to better manage their cloud data. It is a real business, but we are more after the karma than the cash.

Who are you? How old are you? I'm a programmer/engineer who loves all kinds of tech. I've built many tools and projects over my life. My kids sometimes call me "Uncle Ben", but everyone else calls me Dan. :) I was born in 1975.

Where are you located? We're based in Vancouver, Canada. What's your favourite programming language? I love coding in Python, but it is my least-used programming language. :) I do love working in AngularJS though.