County report card · South Carolina
Berkeley County, South Carolina
County portal uses Cloudflare bot detection which deters automated access but may be bypassed by determined actors; its robots.txt also disallows automated access to 19 paths (/calendar/action~posterboard/, /calendar/action~agenda/, /calendar/action~oneday/…)
- Population
- 264,276
- 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: berkeleycountysc.gov/propcards/prop_card_search.php, search.berkeleydeeds.com/NameSearch.php?Accept=Accept, gis.berkeleycountysc.gov/, taxes.berkeleycountysc.gov/#/
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.