Digital privacy is all about controlling how much personal information you expose online. The biggest challenge here is that we are not always in control when completing online tasks. Sharing some of your personal data is a requirement for connecting to the internet.
Attempts to limit what you show to web servers can only be achieved with special tools. This article discusses rotating residential proxies as the newest and most advanced weapon against privacy intrusion. It’s a game-changer that everyone ought to know about.
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Why proxies are crucial for online privacy?
When you enter a URL and visit a website, two important things happen. Your device sends a data request with your IP address, and the website logs your IP with all the actions you have completed. There’s no way around your IP address being used that way.
The Internet Protocol (IP, for short) has established it as a necessary condition for online communication between devices. Each device on a network connected to the internet has a string of characters assigned to it. Furthermore, this unique identifier is assigned by an internet service provider (ISP) and tied to your approximate location.
Whether you like it or not, every website can see the name of your ISP, your approximate location and tie this information to your online actions. There are other, more sophisticated methods of tracking online visitors, such as cookies or browser fingerprinting. However, they are more difficult or even impossible without logging visitors’ IP addresses first.
Proxies come in here as a way to conceal your IP address and, by extension, your identity and location. Simply put, it’s another device that can route your network traffic and send requests on your behalf. When you connect to the internet with a proxy, web servers see its IP address and location, not yours.
Not all proxies are equally good for this purpose. Some aren’t anonymous and will tell the web server that it’s a proxy device connecting. Others use cheap virtual data center IPs that are easily recognizable due to a lack of verification by an ISP. There are cases when you want to use other types of proxies, but for ensuring anonymity, there is nothing better than a residential proxy.
Residential proxies
When you contact an ISP to establish a home internet connection, he will assign you a residential IP address. These are the most legitimate IP addresses possible. They do not change frequently, and the ISP vouches that there is an actual physical device using it in a specific location.
When used as proxies, such IP addresses are the best option for ensuring anonymity. Most internet users connect from residential areas, and behind most IPs are actual humans surfing the web looking for information or making purchases. It is precisely the traffic that all websites and services welcome without any restrictions.
Using commercial IP addresses, you risk drawing unnecessary attention because these IPs are more frequently used by bots, proxies, or other purposes that websites would like to block. These IPs are also not as good for targeting specific locations, while residential IPs signal accurate locations in cities, neighborhoods, or even streets.
However, residential proxies come with drawbacks that make users risk going with other, less legitimate proxy types. Residential proxies are quite expensive as setting up devices in households requires a lot of preparation and compensation for people providing access to their home networks.
Another flaw of residential proxies is that they can be quite slow compared to solutions based on commercial equipment and internet connection. But this is largely a misconception. Depending on the area, residential internet can be fast and, due to location proximity, even faster than other types of proxies.
A well-performing residential proxy can also solve the affordability issue. Sharing residential proxies with multiple users and introducing IP address rotation becomes possible.
Residential IP address rotation
A static proxy is one that does not change its IP address. Sometimes, these are premium proxies when a user purchases a private pool of IPs. However, more often than not, static proxies use so-called sticky sessions, which allow the user to retain the same IP address for a fixed amount of time.
IP address rotation, by contrast, means that the user or the proxy provider has established rules for when your connection will use one IP address or another. With a little bit of tinkering, you can set up a proxy to surf only specific websites, some specific IPs, for example. This is useful for connecting to various accounts online, as you want the webserver to recognize you as the same user.
More frequently, proxy rotation means that the IPs are changing every set period. No matter what tasks you do, every 30 minutes, for example, the IP address is changed. In many cases, this increases your anonymity as the web server cannot track your activity. There’s simply no continuous sequence of data requests.
Unfortunately, IP rotation is known to slow down proxy speed. Each time you change your proxy IP, you need to connect to a new device, which might be located in a different place and require different authentication. It’s easier with virtual IPs on one server as you can simply rotate addresses on the same device.
That’s why, up until now, rotating residential proxies have not been recommended by most proxy experts. Residential connections were slow, and jumping from one physical device to another was a sure way to make your experience even worse. But it’s no longer the case.
Countries with developed residential internet, such as the USA, western Europe, or Southeast Asia, can reach speeds well over 200Mbps. This is more than enough for IP rotation and even shared proxies.
Conclusion
I’m convinced that rotating residential proxies are bound to revolutionize how we surf the web. They are already highly anonymous and fast. Due to IP sharing and rotation, they are becoming affordable, too. But don’t take my word for it – give them a try.
