County report card · South Carolina
Aiken County, South Carolina
County portal uses Cloudflare bot detection which deters automated access but may be bypassed by determined actors
- Population
- 179,245
- Portal
- Assessor
- Portal vendor
- Not identified
What the audit checked
Four low-cost protections every online records portal can have. How we rate counties.
- robots.txtYes — permissive
- Terms of useNot checked
- Bot challengeCloudflare bot detection
- Owner notificationUnknown
Portal audited: qpublic.schneidercorp.com/Application.aspx?App=AikenCountySC&Layer=Parcels&PageType=Search, www.aikencountysc.gov/Depts/TRE/TRE_taxmenu.php, www.aikencountysc.gov/437/ROD-Documents, www.aikencountysc.gov/DspSvc.php?qSvcID=21, click2gov.cityofaikensc.gov/Click2GovTX/index.html
Doing well
- Technical barriers (cloudflare) that deter casual bulk access
Room to grow
- Expanding the robots.txt file to disallow automated scrapers
What to ask for
Three low-cost steps that have worked in other counties to close gaps like this one:
1. Adding clear robots.txt rules that disallow automated scrapers
2. Updating the Terms of Use to prohibit automated access
3. Implementing a notification system that alerts residents when their records are accessed
The full playbook is What Counties Can Do.