Discuss at least two risks associated with scraping data from websites. Describe steps an analyst could take to mitigate those risks.


No clear Terms-of-service for scrapping the B2B partnership data 

The companies like Hubspot (https://legal.hubspot.com/website-terms-of-use) and Salesforce do not have a clear Terms of Service (TOS) when using partnership data. The TOS is subject to interpretation. 

Automation is highly fragile 

Web-scrapping the B2B partnership data with an automated scrapping tool or a programming language like Python- BeautifulSoup is a highly fragile process. The website layout, which can be dynamically changing, can break the automated scraping. Even with automatic scrapping, there will be many manual activities to normalize the data. 

An analyst could list the top companies for B2B partnerships and request the companies for the B2B data. The analyst can start approaching the smaller companies and build the business model to illustrate the value of sharing B2B data, creating a flywheel where more companies will be willing to share the data.