I’ve been chatting with other developers who work on data extraction projects and it looks like most people are stuck dealing with similar problems.
I’m wondering what’s causing you the most headaches in your web scraping workflows right now?
A. Getting blocked by IP restrictions and frequent bans
B. Dealing with really slow proxy connections
C. Getting stuck in endless captcha challenges
D. Having automated browsers get detected and blocked
Feel free to leave a reply and tell us about your experience. If you want to share any techniques or software you’re using to work around these issues, that would be awesome too. Other people here might be facing the same struggles and your solution could really help them out.
A definitely - IP bans are insane right now. even with decent rotating proxies, i’m getting flagged super fast. some sites blacklist whole subnets, so switching IPs doesn’t always work. just had a project where i burned through 200+ proxies in 3 days scraping product data.
Option D - browser fingerprinting detection is killing me. I rotate user agents and switch proxy setups, but these anti-bot systems are crazy good at spotting automated browsers. They track canvas fingerprints, mouse movement timing patterns, you name it. What shocked me was how fast some sites blocked me even with premium residential proxies. Had to add way more realistic browsing behaviors - random delays between actions, human-like scrolling patterns, all that stuff. The detection methods evolve faster than workarounds can keep up. It’s a constant cat and mouse game.
C - Captcha challenges are killing my productivity. Sites keep rolling out more sophisticated systems that trigger even when I’m being careful with requests. What’s really annoying is when you figure out one type, they switch to something completely different. I’ve tried several captcha solving services but they get expensive fast when you’re dealing with large datasets. Just had a project where I was getting image recognition captchas every 20-30 requests despite using rotating residential IPs. The delays from manual solving or third-party services completely wreck any automation efficiency you’re going for.