Companies in Germany may use web scraping to collect data. That does not mean everything available online may automatically be collected. German law makes an important distinction between monitoring product prices and storing personal LinkedIn profiles. The way the data is accessed also matters. Visiting a public product page is different from bypassing a login, CAPTCHA or IP block.
Organisations that collect public, non personal data and respect technical boundaries can use web scraping responsibly in Germany to monitor competitors or gain market insight. Sources, data fields and collection methods should be clearly defined in advance and monitored throughout the project. No more data should be collected than is necessary for the agreed purpose.
The legal framework in Germany
DSGVO and privacy
The German implementation of the GDPR, commonly referred to as the DSGVO, applies when data contains information about an identified or identifiable natural person. Names, personal email addresses, telephone numbers and social media profiles generally fall within this category. Combining separate data sources can be particularly sensitive. A single public profile may appear harmless, but a database containing thousands of profiles, roles, employers and email addresses has a very different character. The fact that this information is publicly visible does not automatically permit unrestricted reuse.
Copyright and database rights
Under sections 87a and following of the German Copyright Act, the Urheberrechtsgesetz, a database may be protected when obtaining, verifying or presenting its contents required a substantial investment. Collecting one public product price is different from copying almost an entire platform catalogue. The larger and more systematic the extraction, the more important it becomes to assess database rights.
Section 44b UrhG provides scope for Text and Data Mining from sources that have been accessed lawfully. Copies must be deleted when they are no longer required. Rights holders may also reserve the use of their works. For online works, such a reservation must be expressed in a machine readable form. This provision enables data analysis, but it is not a general permission to copy or republish commercial databases.
UWG and unfair competition
The German Act Against Unfair Competition, the Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb or UWG, may also be relevant. It is intended to prevent businesses from obstructing competitors unfairly. One potentially problematic example is monitoring a single competitor and using dynamic pricing to undercut that company continuously and automatically. A broader market comparison that monitors several providers in a limited and proportionate way is more appropriate.
Price monitoring is therefore not automatically prohibited in Germany. Its scale, purpose and the way the collected data is used all influence the legal assessment.
Section 202a StGB and technical safeguards
Section 202a of the German Criminal Code, the Strafgesetzbuch, protects data that is specifically secured against unauthorised access. Bypassing an access safeguard without permission may constitute a criminal offence in Germany.
Public accessibility
An important starting point under the German legal context is that the source should be publicly accessible. The data should be viewable without an account, subscription or technical circumvention. Terms of use, robots.txt instructions and machine readable reservations of use may also be relevant.
A product page illustrates the distinction. Its price, stock status and product specifications are generally business data, while the same page may also contain customer reviews. With managed web scraping, we do not collect everything that is technically available. We process only the data fields agreed for the project.
Is the data personal?
Our data model is deliberately focused on business information:
| Data type | Personal data? | Our approach |
|---|---|---|
| Product prices | No | Collected |
| Company descriptions | Generally not | Collected |
| LinkedIn profiles | Yes | Not collected |
| Email addresses | Often | Not collected |
Product prices, assortments, availability and technical product characteristics are generally not linked to a natural person. This data can be used for price monitoring, market research and Business Intelligence.
We exclude LinkedIn profiles and email addresses. A public profile remains personal data even when it can be viewed without logging in. The same often applies to business email addresses that contain an employee’s full name.
Excluding such sources and data fields from the outset helps prevent personal data from entering a larger dataset unnoticed.
A responsible collection method
A legally careful approach in Germany also requires sound technical implementation. The scraper is configured to collect only the data required for the agreed purpose. Requests are set up to minimise the load on the target server. The WSA Bot Manager records which sources are used and which data fields are stored. No more data is collected than necessary.
Managed Web Scraping as a controlled automated data service
Managed Web Scraping combines data collection, checking, monitoring, maintenance and delivery. Our boundary is clear: we collect public product and company data. This allows German companies to use web data for price analysis, market monitoring and strategic decisions without unintentionally building a database of personal information.