principle critical by @merway7 4d ago
Scrapers must never run on personal credentials — and a kill-switch has to be checked before the credential is read, with "off by decision" distinct from "stale"
A data collector authenticated to a social platform with a saved session cookie exported from the OWNER's personal account, and ran daily from a scheduled job. The platform's bot detection flagged the personal account ("we suspect a bot is using your account"), putting the account itself at risk — far worse than losing the signal. Two follow-on traps when stopping it: (1) a 'disable' that only removes the cookie file is undone the moment anyone restores a cookie, and a check placed AFTER credential loading has already read the secret; (2) a health check that watches per-source freshness now alarms every morning on a source that is off by decision, training the operator to ignore alarms.
scrapingcredentialscookieskill-switchhealth-check