We explained what Proxies & VPN Servers are, but depending on some peoples needs – they may need some different types of connections and we will go into more detail here.
When choosing or using a VPN or a Proxy server, the more popular service providers will offer lots of locations for you to choose to appear to come from. Typically, these providers will have many servers connected to the internet in datacenters around the world, at least one in each country they offer; these are called Exit Nodes. These work perfectly well in most cases for a majority of peoples uses, but sometimes users can run into problems using them and trying to watch internet streaming services like Netflix, BBC iPlayer, internet radio stations, betting sites or shopping sites. This is because those sites look at where the connections are coming from and they are able to distinguish between a VPN server in a large datacenter and a PC connecting from a home internet connection. They would assume that if someone wanted to catch up on an episode of Stranger Things or Eastenders that they would not be sitting in an industrial computing facility.
So to get around this, Residential Proxies would be the way to go.
What Are Residential Proxies Used For ?
Residential Proxies let you hide your IP address with another homeowner’s IP address, making your internet activity it look as though it originates from another persons internet connection. These are excellent for people who use proxies to get access to heavily protected sites and who use aggressive data mining techniques.
Residential Proxies, often referred to as Sneaker Proxies or Ticket Proxies are heavily used by people wanting to appear to be ordinary internet users sitting at home; except they want to trigger hundreds or even thousands of connections to sites instead of just one. The main reason for this is for ticket touts or people trying to buy large amounts of limited edition sneakers / mobile phones on specific release days.
Most sites selling these products use software to try and determine if the visitors are genuine local users by checking a few things:
- Are they in a certain country (checking the originating IP addresses)
- Are they local users (checking the IP addresses is not allocated to a datacenter)
- Are they real people not bots (check the browser & computer type)
- Are they real people not bots (use CAPTCHA verification)
- Do they have any suspicious attributes (are they accessing pages and selection boxes faster than a human could type & read)
In order to bypass these and fool sites, people use a combination of Sneaker Proxies and Bots. The proxy handles disguising the traffic location and the bots handle all the other stuff like pretending to be human (which boxes to check, entering usernames, passwords, email addresses, product search keywords, date of birth, payment details etc).
Usually, Residential Proxies are more expensive than general proxies and are more specialized and feature rich to serve the purpose of users.
Residential Proxy Services
The use of these proxies are generally legal (except in some countries that have oppressive regimes and where internet activity is heavily monitored / censored) or where the site being visited expressly forbids the use and techniques described above. All of this is subjective, some internet service providers may also disallow users from using such services or carrying out this type of action and most of the service providers will have terms and conditions forbidding any illegal activity to be conducted over their connections.
We listed a number of service providers above that offer Residential Proxies. In general they offer superb support and help new users through their projects.
Do check back for our continued updates on Residential, Sneaker & Ticket Proxies.
