CO-OP ATM POI File - Colorado & other States

I have been considering making something like this for ATMs on the SUM network. Haven't started it yet though.

PT

If you contact them (CO-OP Network), you can possibly talk them into giving you a list of the ATMs nationwide (or more). I've had good luck talking to my member credit union.

bwarden,

I was on the phone with the Co-op Network head office (800.782.9042) and altough I was bounced 3-4 times with the same answer (Please use our online form) I did not get what I was hoping for despite explaining what I wanted to do with the information. I even tried to see if they would get me in touch with their DBA so that I could ask him to run the Query against the DB but my pleas fell on deaf hears. In the end, I was told that CO-OP does not release a set of record larger than 100 ATM location at a time because well, that is private corporate information. ?!? And enven though I asked, they would not elaborate how this could be.

Long story short, No joy with the Co-OP and none either with my Credit Union (ENT). I paid them a visit and all they were willing to give me was a list of their bank in Colorado and a printout only.

Well, I am too lazy to type this back in and in any case, this is only a subset of what I am really looking for.

So, as any other lazy people would do, I'll see if I can write some code to "query" the Co-Op web page once for every Zip Code in the US and then merge the results into a master csv file....

More to follow on this one...

They may not take well to scraping... this may work best as a community effort -- I'd be glad to submit results for the Portland, OR metro area.

Interesting... the CSV I downloaded has some extra info, except whether the ATM is in a restricted area.

I was a bit disappointed by the response from Co-OP and as a result, I went browsing around and learned a bit of Perl and decided to see if I could write a script that would gather the required info and dump it into a csv file. (That I could subsequently run through gpsvisualizer.com)

So far, I have managed to write a script that query and gather the addresses and other details on a specific Zip Code. And, I have found a year 2000 census file that contains a list of Zip Codes and their surface Area in Square miles.

My plan was/is to improve the script so that it goes through every area codes and selects a search radius that would cover the area of the zip code. I would of course write my script with Sleep functionality so as not to hammer their web site.

Then, I would filter out the duplicates that are likely to occur on the edges of the zip codes.

That said, I just joined this community and the last thing I want is to go against the rules. If writing such scripts is forbidden, then I'll just cease and desist. But, if this is not forbidden, and given the fact that the information is publicly available for the taking, I would be glad to run the script and share my results with everyone... Then, provided that this is successful, I could go about getting the same kind of info from other sites as the need arise.

Hoping to hear from the community...

PS: In my research, I have learned that this is known as Screen Scraping (More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_scraping). I was mostly concerned with the legality as I do not want to get into troubles with the law. Here is what I have found on the legality of scraping from http://www.tomwbell.com/NetLaw/Ch07/Ticketmaster.html

U.S. courts have acknowledged that users of "scrapers" or "robots" may be held liable for committing trespass to chattels [4][5], which involves a computer system itself being considered personal property upon which the user of a scraper is trespassing. However, to succeed on a claim of trespass to chattels, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant intentionally and without authorization interfered with the plaintiff's possessory interest in the computer system and that the defendant's unauthorized use caused damage to the plaintiff. Not all cases of web spidering brought before the courts have been considered trespass to chattels.

I would argue that in my case, the Perl script use is not unauthorized as the data source (www.ent.com) does not publish a "terms of use" or other document on their web site that forbids scrapping. Furthermore, ENT or the Co-Op network could hardly argue that making available their ATM location to a large group of GPS users to be damaging.

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion and in no way represents the opinion of the owners of this site nor the majority of the members.

Scraping and spidering is absolutely frowned upon by owners of most websites. It puts added strains on the their website resources. And it accesses the data in ways that they did not intend. As the owners of the website and the data, they have absolute authority to dictate the manner in which they wish to have these resources accessed.

At POI Factory, we have at all times tried to stay on the positive sides of all laws particularly those involving intellectual property. Not only because it is the right thing to do but also because intellectual property is the bread and butter of this site. If we don't advocate voraciously protecting intellectual property rights of others, we currently can't expect others to respect the rights of the owners here.

I also believe that if we want certain data, we must be willing to put in the work to get it by the legally available means. Otherwise, we should move on to something else. And if the data isn't available, then it isn't available. No big deal. Again, we move on to something else.

As far as scraping not being against the "terms of use" on their website, I would argue that perhaps that because it never occurred to them that someone would scrape their website and not because they think that it's okay. And they have already verbally indicated that they consider large batches of the data to be private information.

And I'm not arguing that making a list of the ATM locations to GPS user would be damaging to them, however, I believe that one could argue that the method of obtaining the information by scraping could potentially be damaging.

Again, this is merely my personal opinion. It is not intended as a flame, and I hope it doesn't come across that way. I will be interested to see other's opinions.

Very well put MM...I know in my personal endeavors for the Frisbee file I have asked and been re-buffed for the use of info..I figure its their loss and I respect that..I am also working with the PDGA Organization and have submitted in writing an RFI and not just a Phone call or email...so they have an 'official' proposal to respond to with background info etc on what a GPSr is and why we want the info..and links to this and other web sites etc...I am finding that allot of people mis-understand why we want or need to info..So maybe try that route!

All Right,

since this is the general consensus, I'll just drop the matter...

This is a tough issue. Personally I'm not against screen scraping if the intent is to provide useful information to others (i.e. not for personal financial gain) and will ultimately benefit the company. After all the information provided is public in nature. Also, I would figure it would be hard to prove damages with the exception of taxing their web servers, but no more so than doing it manually as part of a community effort.

On the other hand you could argue that generating POIs on companies without their knowledge may be interpreted as damaging anyway. What if I generate a list and some of the coordinates are wrong or the list is incomplete. A company could argue that they have lost potential business. Or suppose I work for a competing company and I generate a false POI for another company to anger their customers.

Obviously, the best course of action would be to contact the company directly, as many have done, and get their consent to use their data for POIs. However, I'm sure there are plenty of businesses out there that have no interest in following this avenue. For those I guess they will benefit from communities like this one for extra income. I'll probably make more POIs until they pass some law to prevent it. Just my .02

I just noticed today while poking at http://www.co-opfs.org/public/locators/atmlocator/ that they offer SMS-based ATM location, plus a link to download a POI file. It turns out to be a link to POI Plaza (http://www.poiplaza.com/index.php?p=ds&s=720). The data are a little bit different. It seems to be just a raw listing of all the locations, with the name of the ATM operator. No addresses, no mention of accessibility, etc.