Defending Against Web Scraping Attacks Web scraping attacks, like Facebook's recent data leak, can easily lead to more significant breaches. Web scraping is as old as the Internet, but it's a threat that rarely gets its due. Companies frequently underestimate its risk potential because it is technically not a "hack" or "breach." A recent example is Facebook, which has tried to downplay its latest massive data leak by claiming the scraping impacted public information only. The company overlooks the risk this type of personal data exposure poses for the victims and the ultimate value of harvesting this data on such a massive scale, particularly for social engineering attacks.