What is a Residential Proxy?

While VPNs are all the rage these days for accessing geo-blocked content, their forefather, the proxy server, lives on today.

Whether you need to hide or change the location from which you access a website, remove data from the internet, or manage multiple social media accounts, proxies can help you do these things efficiently.

However, many websites are already familiar with this practice and have therefore blocked several proxy servers. This is where the Residential Proxy comes into play. So let’s take a look at what Residential Proxy Servers are and how they work.

Data Center vs. Residential Proxy Server

While data center proxy servers provide a fast and reliable service, they are also used by many people, services and institutions. However, some companies that don’t like being scraped for data have blocked access to multiple data center proxies.

They can do this by looking at the IP addresses accessing their network. They make note of addresses that are obviously data-scraping by visiting many sites inhumanly quickly, and then block them and their entire subnetwork.

Additionally, most data center proxies are artificial — meaning they don’t belong to a specific device, address, or ISP. This is obvious to almost all big companies, so they can easily block access from these artificial addresses.

For example, Amazon doesn’t want its data to be scrapped, so it has already blocked the entire subnet of many proxy servers. Assuming you find a proxy server in the data center that still has access to Amazon, you’ll soon find that the service you’re using is blocked if you scrape the ecommerce platform.

The advantage of a private proxy server is that it uses private IP addresses, which most companies do not block. Eventually, if they block large swaths of home users, they’ll get complaints from ISPs that their customers can’t access important sites like Amazon.

How residential proxies work

Aside from using a real IP address tied to a physical computer or home address, private proxy networks also make detection more difficult as they can use hundreds if not thousands of unique IP addresses. So when you make a connection request to your landing page, it comes from another computer in a remote location.

So when you scrape data at Amazon, every access request to their servers comes from different computers around the world. In this way, you can collect the information you need efficiently without getting blocked or encountering problems like incorrect information.

Residential Proxy Uses

While using a private proxy sounds shady at times, especially since Amazon blocks it, here are some legitimate reasons for using it.

Ad Verification

Businesses spend millions on digital . Because online ads are harder to track, they need to track where their ads appear. This way, they ensure their ads reach their customers and their target market.

By using home proxies, they can securely browse the internet for their ads and get accurate data on who is seeing them and where. This also helps businesses secure their reputation by being careful about where their ads appear and removing ads that appear on pages that don’t match the company’s image.

trademark protection

While big brands like Nike and Adidas can work directly with big tech companies, that’s not the case for smaller names. Some of them prefer to use third-party services to search the Internet for products that infringe their copyright.

This way, if a third party offers counterfeit items that are similar to those they sell, they can spot it immediately and notify that marketplace to remove infringing products.

Social Media Management

Let’s say you are a professional social media manager working with clients all over the world. In this case, you might face some difficulties when working with two or more clients from different countries like Australia, UK and USA.

This is because social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are suspicious of different social accounts using the same IP address. This can result in additional security measures, additional verification steps, or even a total temporary or permanent ban.

Using a fixed private proxy server fixes your access point to your client’s location and avoids geo-blocking. This way you can avoid possible problems with the social media platform you are using.

web scraping

Many companies use this service for market research. Gathering information using web scraping can help you find demographic information about your target market, allowing you to reach your customers more effectively.

You can even use this to find public information about your competitors’ actions. Ultimately, this helps the consumer because it increases competition and allows companies to offer better products at attractive prices.

Can you share your home network and earn?

While the use of proxy networks in homes appears to be primarily the purview of institutions and professionals, the typical home Internet user may share their excess bandwidth with home proxy providers.

Some of the companies you can lease your connection from include Honeygain, PacketStream and IPRoyal. You can do this by creating an account with them and then downloading an app that will allow their server to connect to your computer.

When they do this, they use your computer or smartphone to route traffic through your IP address. Your apps use little to no processing power, and you can usually limit the amount of data they use in a month.

Currently, honey profit pays $3 per 10GB of data they use while IPRoyal Offers $2, and PacketStream pays $1 each for 10GB of data. These aren’t large sums of money, and you shouldn’t sign up with another internet service just for this service.

However, they’re perfect for sharing data you’re not using to get something extra at the end of the month. Additionally, you can use all three services simultaneously, maximizing your passive earning potential.

Use a Residential Proxy to counteract online restrictions

Resident proxy servers have several legal, ethical, and legitimate uses. And while most users probably won’t need one, you can at least share your connection with businesses, institutions, and professionals who need to bypass some online restrictions. And if you do, you might even get a little reward every now and then.

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