{
  "id": 13957022,
  "title": "I pointed a stealth browser at 5 sites that hate scrapers. Two shut it out completely",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/12/i-pointed-a-stealth-browser-at-5-sites-that-hate-scrapers-two-shut-it",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-12T12:48:33.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/the_aientrepreneur_7ae85/i-pointed-a-stealth-browser-at-5-sites-that-hate-scrapers-two-shut-it-out-completely-2lih"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Five websites known for combating bots were tested using a stealth browser. Wellfound, StepStone, Trustpilot, Glassdoor, and Seek were among them. Out of these, Wellfound and StepStone successfully blocked the stealth browser, completely rejecting the requests. Trustpilot processed 17 out of 20 pages, while Glassdoor and Seek took significantly longer, with Seek requiring about 45 seconds per page. Due to the slower performance of Seek, the author decided to stop using a browser-based scraper. The author now focuses on scraping JSON feeds directly, which are the actual products, bypassing the need for browser emulation. This approach has proven successful for sites like Substack and Telegram, which offer public endpoints for access to posts and channel searches. The author concludes that the most efficient scraper is one that doesn't need to pretend to be a human, and emphasizes the importance of reaching for the feed first before resorting to a browser.",
  "summary": "Everyone selling scraping right now sells the browser. Stealth Chromium, fresh fingerprints, \"undetectable\". So i tested one properly before trusting it with a paid product. Five sites known for fighting bots. Straight from a cloud server, no proxy, real pages. Wellfound (startup jobs): 20 of 20 pages, about 7 seconds each StepStone (European jobs): 16 of 16, but 45 seconds a page Trustpilot…",
  "key_points": [
    "Wellfound and StepStone blocked the stealth browser completely",
    "Trustpilot processed 17 out of 20 pages",
    "Seek required about 45 seconds per page, leading to scraper abandonment"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}