Craigslist v. 3Taps (2013–2015)
Craigslist sent scraper 3Taps a cease-and-desist letter and blocked its IP addresses. 3Taps and its partner PadMapper kept scraping by moving to different hosting and circumventing the blocks.
The Northern District of California found that circumventing technical barriers after a cease-and-desist constituted unauthorized access under CFAA and entered a permanent injunction.
The case established that bypassing technological gates, unlike merely scraping open pages, creates clear liability.
ProAPIs' use of millions of fake accounts to dodge LinkedIn's blocks mirrors the 3Taps pattern of circumventing technical barriers, the liability theory that won in court.
