What are residential proxies and how are they used?

You have probably found yourself in a situation where you wanted to visit a certain website, but the provider has geo-locked the content, so you could not access it from your country. This does not apply only to blocking the content but also to your IP address and disabling the web traffic for you as a user. Have you ever wondered how to get rid of such frustrating situations? If you have, you came to the right place because we are going to remove all the question marks above your head.

Contents

What are residential proxies?

To start with, we will give you a comprehensive explanation of what residential proxies are, since they are the main solution to your problem. So, a residential proxy is a smart way of concealing your real IP address while surfing the internet. In other words, residential proxies enable you to be seen by others as a user from a different location than the real one because the proxy serves as an intermediary server that reroutes the traffic.

Once the activity of the user is rerouted through another device, the only IP address that can be seen belongs actually to the device, which depends on the chosen virtual location. This way, the real IP address of the user stays completely anonymous and hidden from everyone.

How are residential proxies used?

There are numerous ways to use residential proxies. Unfortunately, there is a high percentage of their misuse because they are a perfect way to conceal the real location of hackers and fraudsters.

Ad placements and verification

One of the most common uses of residential proxies is to verify and check the ads which are placed on your website. This way you will be able to see potential threats and disable all suspicious ads that appear on your pages. If you are not careful with your ads and do not block suspicious ads, this could seriously harm the reputation of your brand and drive away your customers. To make the whole process quick and simple, choose an easy-to-use residential proxy provider.

Bot traffic

Speaking of the misuse of residential proxies, fraudsters often use them for website scraping in order to steal the code and the website’s content. Later on, they use such data to build similar websites and deceive the users. With web scraping, you can also find all the information about your competitors and get into their websites and social networks. Furthermore, residential proxies are used for scalping products and reselling them to get a certain profit.

Internet Marketing

When it comes to marketing, everyone knows it is a crucial part of every business. Thus, business owners often reach for the data and marketing strategies of their competitors to have an insight into the possible improvements they might include in their marketing plans. You can use residential proxies to fulfill your potential and become competitive in the market with ad and email automation and different marketing campaigns.

Bypassing content restrictions

Many streaming services limit the content to certain countries and block it from others. By using VPNs or residential proxies, users can set a location of their choice and smoothly fraud the providers. This way, they are able to watch the content regardless of limitations.

Conclusion

As you see, residential proxies have two different sides. On one hand, they can benefit your business and online safety, but, on the other hand, they can assist in doing a lot of harm on the internet. By using it wisely, you can stay safe online, get rid of blocked content, and improve your business in so many ways.