'Scrapers' Dig Deep for Data on Web

Bilal Ahmed wrote about his health on a site that was scraped.

Andrew Quilty for The Wall Street Journal.
By Julia Angwin And Steve Stecklow

At 1 a.m. on May 7, the website PatientsLikeMe.com noticed suspicious activity on its "Mood" discussion board. There, people exchange highly personal stories about their emotional disorders, ranging from bipolar disease to a desire to cut themselves.

It was a break-in. A new member of the site, using sophisticated software, was "scraping," or copying, every single message off PatientsLikeMe's private online forums.

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