A protection system and associated method prevent the automatic crawler access to a company's web-based data, without impacting the ability of an interactive user, such as a consumer, to access the data and to conduct regular business transactions. In one embodiment, the protection system will not prevent the crawler from downloading data; rather, the data will be rendered non-extractable by the crawler. In another embodiment, the protection system will prevent crawler access to the data. To this end, the protection system uses any one or a combination of the following six transcoding techniques: Transcoding technique that changes the web page structure; transcoding technique that changes the web page content; transcoding technique that selectively changes web page variable names; transcoding technique that selectively converts text to images in the web page; transcoding technique that alters form values when executed; and/or transcoding technique that generates a substantial portion of, or the entire web page when executed.