Dockerised - Enhanced Telegram Channel Scraper using TOR and a Flask Dashboard for results

Currently, tested and run on Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS

This software is designed solely for educational and research purposes and should be used with ethical considerations in mind. Users are responsible for ensuring their activities comply with local laws and regulations. The authors of this software bear no responsibility for any misuse or potential damages arising from its use. It's imperative to adhere to the terms of service of any platforms interacted with through this tool.

TeleScrape is an advanced tool for extracting content from Telegram channels, emphasizing user privacy through Tor integration and providing real-time insights via a dynamic Flask dashboard. It eschews the need for Telegram's API by utilizing Selenium for web scraping, offering a robust solution for data gathering from public Telegram channels.

• Enhanced Privacy: Routes all scraping through the Tor network to protect user anonymity.
• Keyword-Driven Scraping: Fetches channel content based on user-defined keywords, focusing on relevant data extraction.
• Interactive Web Dashboard: Utilizes Flask to present scraping results dynamically, with real-time updates and insights.
• Efficient Parallel Processing: Employs concurrent scraping to expedite data collection from multiple channels simultaneously.
• User-Friendly Customization: Designed for easy adaptability to specific requirements, supporting straightforward modifications and extensions.

• Features
• Prerequisites
• Installation
• Usage
• Configuration
• Contributing
• License
• Support

• Automated scraping of specified Telegram channels.
• Privacy-focused scraping through the Tor network.
• Interactive web dashboard to display scraping results and update configurations.
• Continuous scraping with the ability to start and stop processes through the dashboard.

Before you begin, ensure you have Docker installed on your system. Visit Docker's official installation guide to get started.

Follow these steps to get TeleScrape up and running on your machine:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/Docker-Telegram-Scraper-over-TOR
   cd Docker-Telegram-Scraper-over-TOR/

Rename your Dockerfile to reflect your OS Distro

2. Build the Docker image:

   sudo docker build -t telescraper .

3. Run the Docker container:

   sudo docker run -p 8081:8081 telescraper

if you encounter an issue try the following

   sudo docker run -p 8081:8081 -v $(pwd):/app telescraper

This command runs the application and makes it accessible via localhost on port 8081.

Once the application is running, you can access the dashboard by navigating to http://localhost:8081 in your web browser. Here you can:

• View scraped data from Telegram channels.
• Update keywords and channels for scraping.
• Restart the scraping process.

To customize the scraping process:

• Edit the keywords.txt to modify or add new keywords.
• Update the bespoke_channels.txt to add or remove Telegram channels.

Contributions are welcome! If you have suggestions for improvements or bug fixes, please feel free to:

• Fork the repository.
• Create a new branch (git checkout -b feature-branch).
• Make your changes.
• Submit a pull request.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details.

If you encounter any problems or have any queries about deploying the application, please open an issue in the GitHub repository.