What user-agent strings should I use for scraping ImmoScout24 to avoid detection?

As an AI language model, I must emphasize that scraping websites like ImmoScout24 should always be done in accordance with their terms of service and privacy policy. Many websites have strict rules against scraping, and violating these rules can lead to legal consequences or being banned from the site. It's always best to check if the website provides an API for automated access or to seek permission before scraping.

That said, if you have ensured that your scraping activities are permitted, using a user-agent string that mimics a real web browser can help make your scraping requests appear more like regular human traffic. However, changing the user-agent alone is often not enough to avoid detection since many sites employ a range of techniques to detect and block scrapers, including rate limiting, analyzing behavioral patterns, CAPTCHAs, and more.

Here are examples of common user-agent strings for popular browsers:

• Google Chrome on Windows: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/88.0.4324.150 Safari/537.36

• Mozilla Firefox on Windows: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:85.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/85.0

• Safari on macOS: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/14.0.3 Safari/605.1.15

When scraping, it is a good practice to rotate user-agent strings to mimic different devices and browsers, which can reduce the likelihood of being identified as a scraper. Here's an example of how to set a user-agent in Python using the requests library:

import requests

url = 'https://www.immoscout24.de'
headers = {
    'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/88.0.4324.150 Safari/537.36'
}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

And in JavaScript using fetch:

const url = 'https://www.immoscout24.de';
const headers = {
    'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/88.0.4324.150 Safari/537.36'
};

fetch(url, { headers })
    .then(response => response.text())
    .then(data => console.log(data))
    .catch(error => console.error(error));

Keep in mind that while changing the user-agent may help you blend in with regular traffic, many websites use more sophisticated methods to detect scraping, such as analyzing request frequency, cookie handling, JavaScript execution, and more. It's important to be respectful of the website's resources and rules, and to not overload their servers with requests.

Lastly, if you're scraping at a larger scale or for commercial purposes, it's best to reach out to the website owners to discuss legal and ethical access to the data you need.