Before we delve deeper and determine if you should use residential proxies or not, let’s first briefly discuss what these strange creatures are. So what are proxies?
What is a Proxy
Every time you connect to the internet and browse websites, your website history is logged by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Even the websites themselves are keeping a close eye on your online behavior. Both of these parties can use the gathered data to estimate your location and other identifying information. This is because they are able to track your IP address.
Proxies can help you mitigate this risk and here’s how. A proxy works by hiding your IP address, such that your identity remains hidden. It acts as a gateway between your computer and the destination server. This way, every request that originates from your device, passes through the proxy server first. Meanwhile, everything the destination server sends your way also goes through the proxy server first.
In this whole process, your IP address remains hidden and is replaced by a different IP address that essentially belongs to the proxy (and its provider).
Types of Proxies
There are various types of proxies, such as:
- Residential proxies
- Datacenter proxies
- Dedicated proxies
- Shared proxies
However, in this article, we will be mainly focusing on residential proxies.
So, What is a Residential Proxy?
A residential proxy is an IP address, provided by the ISP. This kind of proxy is associated with a genuine IP address since it is attached to a real physical location. Since these proxies resemble genuine internet users, they are more reliable and tend to provide a better security cover when compared to the other kinds of proxies.
Let’s talk about the varied benefits of a residential proxy in detail.
Benefits of a Residential Proxy
When compared to other kinds of proxies, the level of anonymity provided by a residential proxy is unbeatable. Since they are IPs used by real people, this makes them very hard to block. They mimic the actual user’s behavior, and their chances of getting blocked are almost null.
For businesses, a residential proxy is not only useful in maintaining privacy, but it can also help harvest data from various sources.
Various Residential Proxies Use Cases
Residential proxies are a go-to option for various companies when it comes to scraping flight prices, verifying ads, and more. Let’s take a look at a couple of popular use cases.
- How can residential proxies be used for ad verification?
If you are a business that runs ads in different categories and want to ensure that they are delivered properly, residential proxies could be a great way to keep a close eye on them. Often, scammers display fake ads and claim the revenue by superimposing their ads on your ad.
This is when ad verification helps you out, by verifying that all the ads are running as intended. You can easily verify your ads using residential proxies so that hackers will never know that you have come on the website to verify the ads.
- How residential proxies can be used for aggregating travel fares?
Collecting data related to travel fares is tough. This is because major travel companies and flight company websites impose automated security checks, verifying if a user on their website is legitimate. They block any behavior which resembles a bot. This makes it difficult for businesses to scrape the required data.
This is when a residential proxy helps you out, by hiding your location and letting you mimic the behavior of an authentic user. We also invite you to read a more in-depth text by Oxylabs on how residential proxies work.
Residential Proxies vs. Data Center Proxies
Since we have already talked about residential proxies, let’s also try to understand the underlying concept behind data center proxies and explore the differences between the two.
Although data center proxies hide your identity pretty well, they are generally not seen in a good light. This is because these proxies are widely used by hackers for illegal activities. As a result, servers are programmed to issue an alert whenever they detect data center proxies. Thus, if you use data center proxies, the chances are quite high that it will get blacklisted by the target website.
Furthermore, even if you decide to go with data center proxies, it will eventually get blocked as the IP address of the proxies provided by data centers often starts with similar integers, which make it easy for the servers to link them as belonging together.
However, this is not the case with residential proxies. Since these proxies are provided by ISPs, they resemble genuine IP addresses and are good to go.
The Wrap Up
As is evident, residential proxies are your safe bet for various business purposes. They are safe, secure, and beat any odds of getting banned.
What are your views on this? Let us know in the comments below.
