User Agent
A user agent is a short line of text your browser sends to every website it visits, introducing itself. It names the browser and version, the operating system, and the rendering engine — something like "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) ... Chrome/120.0". The server reads it on each request to decide how to respond.
Websites use the user-agent string for practical things: serving the mobile version of a page to a phone, adjusting layout for different browsers, or tailoring content. Bots identify themselves here too — Googlebot announces itself with its own user agent so sites know a search crawler is visiting.
Because it is just text the client chooses to send, a user agent can be set to almost anything. Automated tools often set a realistic browser user agent so their requests look like an ordinary visitor's rather than a bare script's, which some sites treat with suspicion. There is nothing exotic about this — every request on the web carries a user agent, and setting a sensible one is simply part of making a request a server will answer normally.
How it relates to scraping
A scraper that sends an unusual or empty user agent stands out, so scrapers typically present a normal browser string like any other visitor. It is one of many small signals a site reads to tell routine traffic from automated traffic. 1Scrape handles these request details for you — you never set a header — so collection just works and you get a clean CSV.
Frequently asked questions
Is changing your user agent illegal?
No. The user agent is a field the client fills in, and browsers, apps, and bots all set it routinely — search engines included. It is a normal part of how web requests work. As always with 1Scrape, only public data is collected and you are responsible for lawful use.