Crawling a web forum and presenting the posts in a search
<p>Is what this site is doing with steam community legal? <a href="https://www.steamtrades.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.steamtrades.com/</a></p>

<p>I assume that is a grey area, no? So what are the factors that would make it legal or not? I assume one should not show too much content from a user's post in the preview, not sure about the avatar and user name/reputation (GDPR). About the search itself - I am not sure whether it is allowed to aggregate one user's posts; might also fall into GDPR, no?</p>

<p>And what consequences can you expect? With GDPR violations (worst case) I assume a 5 digit fine would be possible? Then what about the rights of the original website? I assume the common practice is to send a cease and desist, but not to sue for damages in the first step?</p>

<p>When users signed up for steam, or use steam's marketplace, they agree to the privacy policy and end user license agreement.</p>

<p>In it, they probably agree to letting valve publicly show their trades (and lots of other information too).</p>

<p>These 'trades' are apparently public forums posts. Valve displays this information publicly, with permission from users (through the privacy policy).</p>

<p>The GDPR primarily concerns the information valve retains from their users, rather than the information these crawlers do.</p>

<p>However, it is possible that if users instruct valve to delete their accounts, and remove all their data from their forums, then these crawlers may be in breach if they retain these deleted posts. Though I am not sure this would be the case, since they obtained this information from a public forum source.</p>

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