Screen Scraping. Screen scraping is normally associated with the programmatic collection of visual data from a source. Originally, screen scraping referred to the practice of reading text data from a computer display terminal’s screen. This involves reading the terminal's memory through its auxiliary port, or by connecting the terminal output port of one computer system to an input port on another. The term screen scraping is synonymous with the term bidirectional exchange of data. A screen scraper might connect to a legacy system via Telnet, emulate the keystrokes needed to navigate the legacy user interface, process the resulting display output, extract the desired data, and pass it on to a modern system. More modern screen scraping techniques include capturing the bitmap data from a screen and running it through an optical character reader engine, or in the case of graphical user interface applications, querying the graphical controls by programmatically obtaining references to their underlying programming objects.
Screen Scraping. Lack of API’s from content providers often force developers to employ screen scraping to retrieve information they are seeking. In scrapping process software tools are used to parse and analyze content that was originally written for human consumption in order to extract semantic data structures representative of that information that can be used and manipulated programmatically [18]. For example XMLTV, a collection of tools that aggregate TV listing from all over the world. Screen scrapping is normally considered an inelegant solution. The first reason is that, scraping has no specific contract between content providers and content users. Another reason is lack of sophisticated, re-usable screen scrapping toolkit software. The dearths of API’s are available due to application specific needs of each individual scraping tool.
Screen Scraping. You should be aware of a practice commonly known as "screen scraping" or "information aggregation" whereby so-called "information aggregators" make available to their customers a web site on which the customers may view information obtained from other web sites. For example, a Credit Union member, Xxxx Xxx, might have brokerage accounts, credit card accounts, bank accounts, insurance accounts and loans with a number of entities that provide online access to Xx. Xxx. For each entity with which Xx. Xxx has online account access, Xx. Xxx might have a separate user ID and password, and he would have to log in separately to each entity’s web site to view account information or perform a transaction in a particular account. An information aggregator, or "screen scraper," instead gives Xx. Xxx the option to view and manage all of his online accounts held by the various securities, insurance, banking and lending entities in one place - on the aggregator’s web site. Often, the composite information from the various entities is reformatted to the information aggregator’s standards. To make this possible, the information aggregator will ask you for your user ID and password for the various online accounts you wish to view on the information aggregator’s web site. If you give the information aggregator this information, you do so at your own risk. Xxxxxx County Federal Credit Union cannot verify the identity of the person gaining access to your account with your user ID and password, whether that person is you, another individual to whom - despite the Credit Union’s warning - you have given your password, or an information aggregator. The Credit Union will not be liable for the consequences if you share your password and account information with others. You agree that if you use an automatic check writing service operating through use of a personal computer or otherwise, the treatment of each item presented against your account through that service and Xxxxxx County Federal Credit Union’s rights and obligations regarding the items presented will be the same as if the item were signed or initiated personally by you. Xxxxxx County Federal Credit Union’s privacy policies protect members” nonpublic personal information. If you choose to give your password and account information to a screen scraper or information aggregator, you should understand that the person or company may not protect your nonpublic personal information to the same extent the Credit Union will. You sh...
