The Captcha is seen as the most universally annoying aspect of creating an account, making a purchase, or commenting online. Sitting there, proving your humanity by entering warped words or the numbers on a fading sign is an outright waste of your time. There are millions of people in the world who stop there — captchas are annoying, but they have to deal with them. For the proxy savvy internet user that’s not a very viable option.

Captchas present a serious roadblock when it comes to heavy proxy users. The most common scenario goes like this: You’ve purchased a batch of proxies, an SEO software tool to use those proxies, and are in the process of scraping data, sending emails, and commenting on the internet. You hit a bunch of captchas with your proxies, which stops them in their tracks. A proxy can’t solve a complex captcha — it can just connect to a website. Your software tool can’t solve the captcha alone, so it also becomes stuck.

What you need is a captcha breaker. The good news is that there are a ton of options that work on various levels. The bad news is they cost money; either a one-time fee or an ongoing monthly expense.

I’ll list the most popular methods of captcha breaking procedures below, and tie them into specific products you can use and research. First, though, I’ll issue the warning that seems to accompany any legitimate article about proxy use.

The Proxy Captcha Warning

If you’re in the proxy world you know something about the typical warnings that exist. Namely, that proxies are commonly used for illegal activity like DDoS attacks and the like. While this is true, proxies are used for a ton of other reasons, too, many of which fall under white hat (legal) tactics.

The area becomes a little more gray when we’re talking about proxies and captchas, because captchas were specifically designed to thwart proxies. It’s that whole human vs. robot idea that John Connor was so scared of — captchas were invented to make sure bots weren’t activating aspects of the internet, like buying concert tickets or commenting on blogs. Those are human activities, whereas pulling emails from public webpages can (and really should) be done by a bot.

In the common scenario above, you probably noticed a couple actions, like sending emails and commenting on the internet, that potentially fall in the black hat realm. At the extreme, these are spam email marketing platforms and rapid-fire comments across the internet. This is frowned upon and will get you in trouble pretty quickly. However, you can do small-scale emailing to a select group of people once, say 300-500 people, use a captcha breaker, and not get in trouble. You could also automatically comment with your backlinks, but you’d need to do it very infrequently and very precisely, which is more apt for a human than a bot.

The point here is that the combination of proxies and captchas tends to lead one down a dark path. I can’t advise following that path, because it could end in proxy bans, negative search engine rankings, or cease and desist notices from sites like Ticketmaster. However, the tools used for evil are just as potent when used for good (or neutral, I’m not Gandalf or anything). It’s therefore important to know how to use them.

Captcha Breaking Services

The world of captcha breaking is ripe with services. They fall into two main categories:

• These are like every other algorithm in that they are automatic, code-based, and designed to work without issues. The services that use algorithms for captcha breaking are very powerful these days, but do have some limits because they can’t break certain captchas.
• That’s right, the old-fashioned captcha breakers are sourced all over the world and paid by the hour to sit in a chair and break captchas for you. If this sounds like farming bodies in The Matrix to you, you’re watching too much cinema. It’s a job!

Some services utilize a combination of these methods to get the job done quickly, and typically captchas are solved in between 1-15 seconds.

The basic premise to captcha breaking services involves three steps, which I’ll lay out below.

1. Get a SEO Scraper/Ticket Bot software. Captcha breaking on this level doesn’t work by just visiting a website normally. You’ll need software, like SENuke or GSA Search Engine Ranker, that you can load your proxies into and send out specific HTTP requests. You’ll want to get software specific to your needs.
2. Get a captcha breaking service or software. I will list these below, and they are the core of this article.
3. Load the captcha service API into the bot software. When you use the bot software to ping websites or perform actions they will encounter a captcha; if you’ve loaded the captcha breaking API properly into the software (this is fairly easy), it will send an automatic request to that captcha breaking service. You wait 1-15 seconds, then the captcha comes back solved.

To be clear, you’ll need more than one of these services to effectively break captchas. That said, here are the best captcha breaking services for hire today.

GSA Captcha Breaker

GSA has made a name for itself in the proxy community as a supplier of excellent software tools. GSA Captcha Breaker is another of those, and aims to shut down the competition in the captcha breaking marketplace.

Unlike many of the following services, GSA Captcha Breaker costs a one-time fee of $147 and works on Windows platforms. It is entirely based on algorithms and is loaded with 600 pre-configured captcha types that it can solve on the fly. That’s a ton of options for software that will run right on your computer.

The Captcha Breaker also allows you to enter your own algorithms, so if there’s a captcha it can’t solve but you know how to code the solution, you can plug it right. Coupled with that is a robust (and private) community that uses the Captcha Breaker, many of whom have already built extra algorithms for more captcha breaking solutions, so you’ll get access to these by searching the forums and asking for solutions.

The last major feature is that if Captcha Breaker can’t solve your captcha, it gives you the option to forward the breaking process to another service. This may seem like a foolhardy move — linking your own service to a competitor’s. The reality is that no algorithm will be able to solve every kind of captcha; some captchas are just too difficult. GSA knows this, and knows that other competitors use humans to solve captchas. For this to work you’ll need to have accounts with that other service, but it’s nice that GSA gives you the option.

GSA Captcha Breaker can be tried as a demo for free for five days.

How It Works

• First, you download the software.
• Open it up and set the parameters of the captcha methods you want it to emulate — Captcha Breaker uses algorithms based on competitor’s methods (many of which are listed below), which is a little unfair but certainly effective.
• After selecting the methods, enter the IP address the software should “Listen On.” This ties into your proxy bot, which should also be running and pinging websites for data.
• After entering the IP address of the channel you’re searching on, the Captcha Breaker will automatically find any captchas that need to be solved. It will solve them if it can; if it can’t, it will send the captcha to another service, presuming you have one of those set up as well.

While it’s a large up front cost, this will save you a lot of money if you plan to break captchas often. Most services cost money per broken captcha, which will add up. If you want an in-house solution to breaking most captchas, go with GSA Captcha Breaker.

Death By Captcha

Sometimes a great name is all you need. Other times, it’s helpful to have a killer product. Death by Captcha (DBC) has both. Regarded as one of the premier captcha breaking services, it utilizes humans and advanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to get you the captcha answers you need. Everything the OCR can’t crack, the humans can.

The service is excellent in its functionality and usefulness, not only because it breaks captchas within 15 seconds, but because the API is available for multiple softwares and programming languages. It supports:

• C
• PHP
• Python
• .NET
• C#
• VB
• Java
• Perl
• AutoIt3
• iMacros

Unlike GSA Code Breaker, DBC is a registration-based service. You have to create a login and password and pay for a package. The lowest package is $6.95 USD for 5,000 broken captchas; everything goes up from there.

How it Works

After creating your login and purchasing your package, you’ll find the DBC API that works with the bot software you’re using. If this is difficult, DBC provides a very comprehensive FAQ and has support staff. The company won’t help you to create a custom API or bot to use their services, but they’re all about getting the API to work with the software you have.

After you’ve entered the DBC API into the bot software, it’s as easy as clicking “Go.” You actually won’t even click “Go” with DBC, you’ll do it in your software, and you’ll essentially be sending your proxies on the same data-retrieving (or email-sending or comment-posting) mission you were already sending them on.

This time, whenever the proxies are hit by a captcha they won’t report an error. Instead, the software will send a request to DBC, and either the OCR algorithm or a human will solve your Captcha for you in roughly 15 seconds. Your proxies will move right through and do whatever it is they were meant to do. It’s all very seamless.

DBC boasts a near 90% completion rate, and you’ll only pay for the captchas it is able to solve. Remember, though, that every solved captchas diminishes the number in your DBC batch. If you’re doing bulk work, these will disappear fast.

ReCaptchas and NoCaptchas are supported, but “Animated” Captchas are not, at the time of writing.

DeCaptcher

This service functions similarly to Death by Captcha, but it has a higher percentage of completion (95%) and is geared toward much more difficult captcha solutions. As such, the service costs more — the basic service is $2 for 1000 images, though there are different price plans based on the software application you’re using.

DeCaptcher is one of the better-known underground services, and many people rely on it for image-based captcha solving. It uses both OCR and humans, just like DPC, and actually helped to pioneer the OCR technique. It has a huge list of languages that are compatible with its API:

• C (all platforms)
• PHP (all platforms)
• Java (all platforms)
• C# (Windows, vanilla)
• C# (Windows, 32 bits)
• C# (Windows, 64 bits)
• Perl (Linux, native)
• Perl (Windows, 32 bits)
• Visual Basic 6 (Windows, 32 bits)
• NET (Windows, 32 bits)
• NET (Windows, 64 bits)
• NET 2010 (Windows, 32 bits)
• Delphi (Windows, 32 bits)
• DLL sources (Windows, 32 bits)
• DLL sources (Windows, 64 bits)
• DLL .NET-friendly sources (Windows, 32 bits)
• DLL .NET-friendly sources (Windows, 64 bits)
• DLL .NET 2010-friendly sources (Windows, 32 bits)
• SO sources (Unix, 32 bits)
• PHP cURL-based (all platforms)
• Command line API (Windows)
• DeCapcher xRumer plugin
• HTTP POST APIs for the iMacros scripts and many specific types on demand.

It functions much the same as DPC in that you have to create an account to log in and place your order.

CaptchaTronix

This service is entirely based on algorithms, so no humans are involved. This means a quicker solve rate, but it also means some of the more difficult captchas can’t be solved by CaptchaTronix. The company has only been around for two years, and the website looks like one giant ad, which can be a turn off.

While part of that rings true, CaptchaTronix does seem to have a unique place in the captcha breaking marketplace. Unlike other services, no humans are involved, which means it’s not a pay-per-capture platform. Unlike GSA Captcha Breaker it’s not a software application and doesn’t have a single download price. You still have to log in, create an account with CaptchaTronix, and input the API into a bot software to get it to work.

The fee structure is based on monthly costs; the lowest plan is currently $15.97 per month. That’s for an unlimited amount of captchas. You might wonder why you should use this service instead of GSA Captcha Breaker, as they’re both entirely algorithm-based. CaptchaTronix has over 2495 different captcha types in its database that it can crack (including ReCaptcha), and each one is broken in approximately .75 seconds. This makes the possibility of cracking captchas spike into tens-of-thousands in a single day, which is seriously high volume.

The success rates aren’t quite as high as the other services — 80% and up for most captchas, 60-70% for ReCaptchas. The plus here is speed, because the captchas you can’t solve, while unfortunate, will be gone in the blink of an eye.

How it Works

Like the previous two services, CaptchaTronix works by entering the API into a bot software. CaptchaTronix has a huge list of compatible softwares, and works with some of the biggest names in the industry, like ScrapeBox and GSA SER. The API itself functions for many languages (see below) and can be viewed entirely before you purchase. Compatible languages are:

• Decaptcher API
• Web Form
• cURL
• PHP
• Python
• VB.net
• Java
• Perl
• C# / C++
• iMacros

Which is the Best?

There are plenty of other captcha tools out there — it’s a crowded market. The four above are the best in their category, and each functions slightly differently, so it all depends on your needs. If you’re a high-volume user and don’t need to hit the hardest captchas, go for CaptchaTronix. If you want a human’s touch, pick either DeCaptcher or Death by Captcha — both are regarded as industry leaders. Lastly, if you just want the convenience and cost of a one-time fee, GSA Captcha Breaker is your best bet.

Don’t let those pesky captchas keep you from trolling the web!

The post What is The Best Service for Captcha Breaking with Proxies? appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

If you’ve come to this article it means you’re using proxies. Congratulations. How’s all that anonymity treating you? It also means that you probably have multiple proxies, and it’s getting pretty laborious to switch between them manually. I get it. Proxies take time and energy to use correctly, and that’s without loading them up and clicking on each one separately.

There’s a better way to switch proxies. Whether you’re using a couple proxies to browse anonymously or massive batches to scrape data, you should not be clicking on a different proxy every time you want to use one. I’ll explain three main methods for automatically switching your proxies. They’re all pretty easy and some of them are free!

Browser Proxy Switchers

Browser in this sense means web browser, which should be pretty obvious to you proxy savvy people. Browser switchers are very helpful because a lot of the time proxies are used by individuals in a casual way; people that just want to protect their anonymity, have purchased a small batch (or use free proxies), and need to switch between them.

Often times our web browser is where we’ll update proxy settings. Sometimes you have to update it in the networking settings of your OS, but if you want a single browser to use a single proxy, or switch between a number of them, you’re going to need an extension. Extensions are downloaded from web stores and are specific to individual browsers, like Chrome and Firefox. Extensions number in the thousands and do all sorts of things. These extensions will make switching proxies super easy.

When checking out the extensions of a specific browser, you’ll want to search for “proxy switchers.” A ton of options will come up, especially in a popular browser like Chrome. If you’ve had any experience with this in app stores, it’s the same concept. People upload countless extensions—some of them are good, some are terrible. Make proxy switcher extension decisions based on reviews, how often the software gets an update (also called support), and how easy it is to use.

Proxy technology in general can get dicey quickly, so you’ll want a trusted proxy switcher to be handling your proxies. I’ve also selected a couple well known extension-based proxy switchers for you.

Also note that this method will work for roughly 2-15 proxies. It’s best for the person that just likes to browse the internet anonymously, as opposed to scraping data with large batches.

FoxyProxy

Named after the adorable, swirling-tailed Firefox browser, FoxyProxy is probably the most common and long-lasting extension for easily switching proxies. Today it works with both Chrome and FireFox; you’re probably using one of those two browsers, or can, so this is a pretty universal solution.

One of the downfalls with browser extensions is that you have to use the browser the extension is available on, so shop around for what’s best for you.

FoxyProxy Standard is recommended, though the Basic version is available for simpler users that don’t want bells and whistles. Both are free, and both can be added with a single click.

With FoxyProxy Standard you’ll receive an extension that allows you to easily upload all your proxy IP addresses and switch between them at will. You do this with a simple click, and the browser will start browsing the internet with the proxy you’ve just chosen.

Some of you might be thinking, “Uh, that’s not automatic at all. You’re still clicking!” Those of you thinking such things are spoiled, and are clearly used to technology solving all of your problems. You’re also right, of course.

FoxyProxy Standard can perform more complex functions, the most important of which is automating the proxy switching. You can set a number of rules for automatic switching. They can be set to automatically switch based on what website you’re visiting or for different types of proxies. This allows a SOCKS and HTTP proxy to be employed at different times, depending on your browsing habits.

FoxyProxy functions a little differently in Chrome and Firefox, and it’s really built for FireFox. In that browser it provides helpful color-changing bars to indicate your proxies’ strength, has clear tabs for changing specific settings, and is accessed easily.

In Chrome FoxyProxy melts into the Chrome API, which is nice, but it’s not quite as user friendly. Still, the functionality is great — there are lots of updates and help and you can switch through your proxies easily.

Proxy SwitchySharp

As you’ll begin to see, there are a ton of options in the Chrome web store. Proxy SwitchySharp is one of the most reviewed, and is actually a ported project from SwitchyPlus, a well-known extension proxy switcher that stopped receiving support.

Proxy SwitchySharp also works within Chrome’s API, and allows you switch proxy use in a single click. You can do it manually, but you can also set up rules for switches to occur at specific times or scenarios.

The user interface for Proxy SwitchySharp is well designed, and you’ll be able to do a lot of complex, scenario-based functions with this extension.

Safari Option
 
Unfortunately for users of Safari, there aren’t any extensions that allow you to easily or automatically switch proxies. You can always use Chrome or Firefox on a Mac to get through this issue, but I’m all about providing you with options.

Safari does have a method of easy proxy switching, though it won’t ever be “automatic.” To do this, you’ll need to be able to access your Network settings in Mac OS System Preferences. Once there, find the “Location” drop-down menu (it’s at the top). It will likely say “Automatic,” which is not at all the type of automatic we are looking for.

Click on this to “Edit Locations,” which will open up a screen that allows you to add, subtract, and edit new locations. Essentially, you create a Location for every proxy you have. This will allow you to have a custom setting for each proxy. Do this by naming the Location so you’ll remember which proxy it is, then head over to the “Advanced” button in the same network panel. In the “Advanced” section head to Proxies; you’ll find a number of types of proxies that can be entered, including the authentication methods. Select the type of proxy you are using, enter the IP address and port, click “Ok,” then click “Apply.”

Do this for every proxy you want to use in Safari. After this you can click on the Apple button in the top left of your screen (not in Safari itself), and you’ll see the option for Location under System Preferences. All of your entered locations will be there, and you can select one to use at any time. This routes all your web traffic (or all your traffic, if you have a SOCKS proxy) through the selected Location.

Software

The next category for easy and automatic proxy switching is software. This is a massive category and will effectively switch your proxies for you while also performing a whole bunch of other tasks. There are many tiers of software, from free open source options to paid-for applications. I’ll touch base on two main options.

ProxySwitcher.net

Proxy Switcher is a well-named software application that will switch your proxies with the best of ‘em. The program is free, went open-source in 2014, and all of its files can be found on GitHub. The open source junkies reading should stop here, because this is the resource you wanted.

Proxy Switcher works for Windows 7 or 8. Its technology allows it to auto-detect a network connection and execute “actions” based on that connection. Actions are the term for specific protocols the program follows, like automatically adjusting proxy settings in Internet browsers. The product ships with default actions for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera, so if you use one of those browsers it’ll be really simple to use.

It’s a well used resource, which means many people have created other Actions for other web browsers, and you can create your own Actions. That will require some know-how, of course.

ScrapeBox

If you’re getting into the world of proxies and have enough that you need to switch them frequently, you either need to know about ScrapeBox, or you’ve already heard of it. The tool is primarily used for scraping large batches of domain data, but it’s really a jack of all trades

Most of the previous examples were about basic users wanting to automatically adjust proxy use based on internet browsers. This is great if you have 5 proxies and just want to adjust which one is being used at a given time.

ScrapeBox is more for the power user, and takes everything to a whole new level. The basic function of ScrapeBox is that you enter in a list of proxies, then execute certain complex data scraping actions with those proxies. ScrapeBox is built to use both free proxies and private proxies, so you can enter in massive lists without an issue.

This process is hyper-focused web browsing, but you don’t actually browse the web at all. ScrapeBox browses for you. In this way it’s a bot or crawler software that really opens up the doors to your proxy use.

The automatic part of this is also what ScrapeBox is known for. Within the massive list of proxies you can create individual or overall settings for the proxies, controlling the ping time, number of threads used, when to rest or stop using a proxy. ScrapeBox will also automatically let you know when proxies are no longer functioning properly, saving you the headache of checking.

If you’re a power proxy user, get ScrapeBox. It costs $197 retail, but there’s a continual code online to get it for $97. You can probably find a promo code on Black Hat World for even less. You pay once and it’s yours.

Website API

The previous two methods should get you through most of your automatic proxy rotating needs. However, there are also some services that allow you to perform the same sort of actions within a website application interface (API). The difference between a website API and a browser extension is that the website API is often a service you’re already paying for, not just a proxy switching method.

Igerslike

A good example is IgersLike, an Instagram bot service. The entire process is done within the API of the IgersLike website—you login and perform all your actions there, rather than having a piece of software installed on your computer.

In the IgersLike example, there are countless ways to automatically rotate proxies, including many of the pinging and thread limits available in ScrapeBox. You’ll notice that IgersLike isn’t a service specifically for switching proxies, that’s just one of its features.

You wouldn’t register and use IgersLike just to rotate proxies, just like you wouldn’t buy ScrapeBox just to browse the internet with a different IP address. Each of these has a different level of user interaction.

Proxy Provider API

The other main way to automatically rotate your proxies with an web-based API is through your actual proxy provider. This will depend on the provider, of course. Just like IgersLike, you are paying your proxy provider for a specific service — in this case it’s the actual proxies you’ll be using. When a provider says that it has a web-based API that you can control your proxies from, this is what they’re talking about.

Log into your proxy provider’s website and it will have a screen that shows all the proxies you paid for and what their status is. Some of these APIs will have specific functionality that will let you assign the proxies to different browsers, sites, or types of traffic. The best of these can be automated right there, so you don’t have to download software, an extension, or adjust your OS settings.

If you want to know if a proxy provider has this functionality, shoot an email to customer support.

One Final Thought

The above methods will take care of all your proxy switching needs, and work best for the most common types of proxies: HTTP and HTTPS proxies, which are inherently web and browser-based. Each is really meant for the type of user you are, so identity that first, and then explore your options.

I did want to mention another possibility. There are a number of proxy providers who sell rotating proxies, rather than assign you batches of single IP addresses. This is different than a proxy service that will change your proxies if they fail or if you request new ones.

A rotating proxy service will typically refresh your proxies every couple hours, so you’ll receive new proxies multiple times a day. This is excellent for users concerned with bans and captchas, and those performing more complex functions like Ticketmaster spinning. In effect this means you’ll never be using the same proxies, so they won’t ever bust. While these services are great, they tend to fall on the sketchier side of the proxy equation.

The post How to Automatically Switch Proxies From a List of IPs appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

Facebook is regarded as social media’s top dog throughout the world. In just over 10 years the website has led the way for an entirely new social experience, encompassing more than 1 billion users. In the last few years Facebook’s reach has branched into advertising and marketing. This merging of our social lives and businesses has solidified Facebook as one of the most effective marketing tools on the planet.

You probably have an understanding of the above, if not intimately, then at least in a vague way. As with all emerging commercial activities, there are plenty of tricks to make the system work for you. Facebook is no different in this regard, but the website has done its best to make these tricks very difficult.

The main method for bulk users is to have multiple personal accounts and multiple unconnected business pages, all of which help to boost attention and therefore revenue.

Why is Unblocking Important?

This has nothing to do with unblocking a blocked “friend” via Facebook. If that’s your concern, Facebook itself has a very easy solution. Give that friend a second chance, won’t you?

Unblocking in this context has to do with Facebook’s desire to keep you and your multiple accounts off the website. It’s also about individual users who want to access Facebook but are located in areas where it’s not accessible, or people who want multiple personal accounts for private reasons.

In both cases proxies are the best tool to get around these measures, but you have to do it carefully.

Facebook has invested a huge number of resources to keeping the site free of spam accounts, fake people and phony businesses. The reality is that some of you reading this will be looking to unblock Facebook so you can do exactly these things. Other people will have legitimate needs and still find that Facebook blocks you.

The methods I list below will work in both cases, and I’ll split them into two separate groups:

• Bulk account users. These users will be looking to create multiple Facebook accounts because they have many businesses or want to promote multiple projects through legitimate and illegitimate actions.
• Individual users. Some of you just want to access Facebook on your own without getting blocked. I get it. This will help you out.

The Warning

As you can probably already guess, the methods below allow for a lot spam accounts to be generated. This is not recommended, and Facebook will be quite upset if it finds out you’ve tried to bypass their security features. This will result in banned accounts, banned IP addresses, and a larger hill to climb.

Carry on as you will, but be conscious of the social network of people you’re affecting with your actions.

Unblocking Facebook for Bulk Accounts

The most common legitimate scenario for bulk accounts is a business that manages client’s Facebook accounts, and therefore needs to access hundreds in a single day. This will require smooth and unfettered access to Facebook, and if a block gets thrown up every few minutes or hours, the business simply won’t succeed. Likewise, an individual may need to create a dozen or so accounts because they have many businesses.

In either case you’ll want to use a combination of proxies and software or web-based managers to get your work done quickly and seamlessly.

Proxies

For many people, proxies will be the backbone of managing multiple Facebook pages. A proxy is a unique IP address that is different than your ISP provided IP address. Using a proxy for Facebook accounts will assure that multiple accounts are not cross-linked by Facebook in a negative way, which will reduce your blocks.

However, navigating the proxy world is not necessarily simple. There are a few steps to using proxies correctly for Facebook.

1. Proxy Type

Don’t use free proxies. Free proxies seem enticing and will theoretically keep your costs low, but they get banned often, have hundreds of other users, and will send up red flags for you on Facebook.

Instead, you’ll want to purchase elite private proxies. Yes, these will cost money, but you can consider it part of your business expense. Also, they’re not terribly expensive, depending on how many you need. I’m talking as low as $5 per month for a single proxy.

2. Proxy Location

One of the biggest aspects of getting Facebook blocks on individual accounts is how Facebook views your activity. If you access an account from many locations, it becomes suspicious. Inversely, if you access a ton of accounts from a single location, it also becomes suspicious.

This goes back to the ultimate principle of proxies and internet usage: Companies want humans to use their services.

If one account is accessed by 20 locations in a single day, it doesn’t look like a human. Did you travel to 10 states and 10 countries in one day, and log into Facebook each time? I didn’t think so.

Likewise, if you have 200 Facebook accounts that are all logged in from the same IP address, it looks like a single human is running an entire Facebook Page business, which Facebook may identify as a spammer.

The second example can certainly be legitimate, and therefore has more wrinkles that I’ll get into later. For now, think about how Facebook activities look from a human or bot perspective, and you’ll start to catch on.

Proxy location matters for this. When purchasing a proxy you can often ask your provider where the IP will be located physically. You’ll want IPs that are in the same general physical location as where the account was created. If you don’t get this, you’ll be asked to verify the account when you use your new IPs.

After that first verification you should be OK, as long as you use the same proxy every time, which leads me to the next step.

3. Assigning Proxies

Assigning proxies falls right on the heels of proxy location. In general, you’ll want to assign specific proxies to specific Facebook accounts. Let’s say you have 20 Facebook accounts to manage. In the ideal world, you’ll want to grab an individual private proxy for each account — so, 20 proxies.

You have to do more than just use a proxy every time for an account; you have to use the same proxy for the same account. Link them together in a spreadsheet for manual reference, or program your software platform (more on that below) to always use the same proxy IP address for the same Facebook account.

This consistency is the most human-like because it shows Facebook you’re accessing that account from the same place every time.

That said, you don’t need one proxy for every account. Usually 2-3 accounts per proxy is fine, because that’s about the amount of Pages and Personal accounts a normal human has.

Facebook Managing Software

This topic could be an article all by itself, so I won’t get into huge amounts of depth here. Just know that for the business savvy person who has decided to manage large batches of Facebook accounts for clients, you’ll want to get software. Managing the accounts manually is a serious time-suck.

You could use something like Hootsuite to manage your Facebook accounts (and other social media services), but it doesn’t have an option to connect via separate proxies. This means all of your activity will be through one IP address, which just won’t cut it for some people.

Three of the best services for this are Face Dominator, Mass Planner and Sociota. The first two are software applications you’ll download to your computer. They only run on Windows and have a number of simple and complex tools to help you grow your Facebook interactions on unlimited accounts. Sociota is a web-based browser that does something similar, and aims to compete with Hootsuite, but is much more advanced.

Each of these programs is used by white and black hat social media marketers. I can’t tell you what to do (obviously), but note that each service is meant for legal use only.

Facebook Tactics 

Beyond using proxies and software managers, the best way to keep Facebook from blocking you is to be smart about the actual networking you’re doing. This again relies on the human vs. bot mentality.

The Bad Spammer

Here’s a good scenario. A typical spammer with no real knowledge of Facebook will create twenty accounts in an hour, create 5 business Pages run from each account, log onto all of them from a single IP, and start posting automatically with a bot program. Each of those 5 Pages per account will focus on a single niche, and they’ll tag and link each of their Pages to the others so that the social “reach” of each Page rises. They’ll like 1,000 other pages in the first twenty minutes of account creation, post on people’s walls, send out friend requests, etc.

Essentially, they’ll blast a message loud and clear to Facebook: “I am here to spam!”

Facebook will respond with a quick kick in the face (get it?) and ban the IP address first, then every account that is connected to it. The typical, non-educated spammer will weep (or just pop another Monster), and then search the internet for an article like this.

What You Should Do

Everything above is a “don’t do” in the realm of Facebook. I’ll assume you’ve grabbed private proxies and know how to assign your IP addresses to your accounts. The biggest component to consider after those two musts is how you use Facebook itself.

It’s a social networking tool, not a spamming tool.

If you want Facebook to believe you’re using its services legitimately, try using them legitimately. Crazy concept, right? With management software you will have the ability to like posts and pages, comment on walls and pictures, and post your own content. This is what a real person running a business Page would do, so you should do it too.

The key is to not do it too fast, or too concentrated. Don’t like 1,000 new pages in ten minutes, do it in 4-7 days. You can set your management software to do the liking for you, just remember to set the rate limit to a slow amount. This way Facebook will think it’s a real person liking pages to grow their business.

The second biggest folly in the above scenario is connecting your pages to each other through likes, tags, and promotion. Don’t do that. It’s painfully obvious to Facebook (and everyone in your niche) when you own multiple Pages that try to boost each other.

This is especially true when you create the accounts in the same day or week. If you’re serious about this, stagger your account creation to further reduce the connections each Page has to the other.

If you have separate IP addresses, accounts created at separate times, and normal human-speed behavior, there’s no reason Facebook will block you.

Unblocking Facebook for Everyone

The above is specifically geared towards bulk Facebook account managers, but I know individuals can get blocked as well. Many of the same principles apply, especially using an IP address that is in the same area as your ISP IP address.

If you’re trying to access Facebook at school or work and it’s blocked, a proxy will most definitely allow you to log in. You might have to verify your account via email or phone, but that shouldn’t be an issue because it’s just a single account, and you’ll probably have your phone on you.

The other solution that works is simply heading to a website that helps to unblock Facebook for you. While I don’t totally recommend these sites because they are usually free — which means they’ll scrape your data, ask for an email address, or somehow make you less protected — in a pinch they will work.

Facebook blocks will take some time and money to get around, but it’s nothing you can’t handle. I have faith in your abilities. Just try to keep it business-focused, because the social network is a monster time suck.

The post How Do I Unblock Facebook Using Proxies? appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

You went to sleep with all your proxy settings in place, your monitor switched off or dimmed down, the CPU purring into the night. You slept well knowing you’d have thousands of points of data in the morning to check out, but the software timed out sometime in the night, and you wake to a bunch of seemingly burned connections.

The bane of a proxy life is waking up to a bunch of dead proxies. It’s frustrating, demoralizing, and makes you wonder why technology is all such garbage if one little thing can’t work correctly for just one night and—

Listen, I get it. The reality, though, is there’s probably something you’re doing wrong. Or, at the very least, something somebody is doing wrong. There’s always the off chance that a proxy just won’t work for the inexplicable mystery that surrounds deep tech, but 99% of the time the problem is diagnosable and reversible.

I’ll outline 9 reasons your proxies likely stopped working below, and how to fix them. I’ll note here that most of these steps are for individuals using paid, private proxies. In the cases where free proxies or proxy servers are relevant, I will specifically address them.

1. Firewall

This is the basic issue, especially for the uninitiated.

If you’re new to proxies always start your diagnostic with this simple question: “Do I have a firewall running?” Most of the time you’ll find that yes, somehow Norton AntiVirus turned itself on in the middle of the night and caused all of your connections to be severed.

I know you asked your computer to never turn on the software again, but sometimes software finds a way. I won’t get into the specifics of every anti-virus on every platform (talk about a serious endeavor), but as a general rule you can check firewall settings in Windows and Mac fairly easily.

This works for the OS-level firewall, but often there are third-party applications (like Norton) running in the background. I’m going to assume you have some level of sophistication with this sort of thing; after all, you’re running proxies. Be thorough and look through your computer’s activity monitor if it’s still not resolved.

Firewalls will kill any proxy networking you are conducting because proxies, by nature, require you to have open ports. Turn off the firewall and your ports are open; leave them up and watch your proxies burn.

2. Router Settings

If you’ve checked to make sure firewalls are not specifically the culprit, it’s time to expand the search to your general router settings. Sometimes individual routers come with firewalls in and of themselves. You need to either find the manual to your router (that’s probably lying in a dusty box somewhere) or look it up online. Many big brand companies have the user manuals online these days.

Find yours and log into your router via a web browser. There should be a handful of settings all reachable with a web-based GUI. Look to see if the router has any firewalls checked.

Assuming this is not the case, continually work through the settings to see if any particular ports are blocked. Proxies tend to use Port 80 (as do all HTTP requests), but they can use other ports. If any of these ports are blocked, unblock them.

The more common scenario is that somehow your proxy application, like ScrapeBox or GSA, got blocked in the router itself. It’s not always clear how this happens, but if you notice that any application you’re using in conjunction with proxies is in a special disabled category, uncheck it.

Other areas to look for in your router settings include Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), which, when enabled, makes it easy for multiple applications and devices to stream and connect seamlessly. Parental controls could also be limiting your access.

Conversely, there are times when connections won’t go through and it’s very hard to troubleshoot. You can use your router settings to make sure certain applications and ports stay open permanently. This process can be technical, but typically you manually enter what you want to keep open.

3. Home Network Connection

This may seem simple to some, but double-check that your normal Internet connection is working smoothly. Can you browse the web? Can you get your email? For inexperienced proxy users what often happens is the software is used too aggressively. I’ll get into specific cases below, because there are a lot of factors behind this and each is a step in getting your proxies working again, but one of the main issues is that your ISP will get upset at the aggressive use if you’re not careful.

When your ISP is upset it has the ability to throttle, suspend, or disable your actual network connection. Disabling is pretty extreme, as they would lose a customer, so it’s likely not that.

To run a full test of this, turn off all your proxy software, your modem, your router, your PC. Turn off everything that has any association to your proxies or internet connection — in effect, wipe the slate clean.

Power everything back up in incremental stages, starting with your computer, then your modem, then your router. At this point, test to see if your internet is working properly. Yes, for a brief amount of time you will have a bare-assed IP address and the world will know where you are. Deal with it.

After all this turn on your proxy applications and test out a single proxy. Working? Start loading up the rest.

4. Username/Password Authentication

This is another classic that’s easily solved. When you purchase proxies you are generally emailed a batch of proxies from your provider. Sometimes the provider will have a web-based API for you to access your proxies and control them, other times they won’t. Due to the somewhat fragile nature of proxy ethics, providers will almost always create a system of authentication for your proxies.

In fact, if they don’t, it should be a cause for concern.

The two common types of authentication are a username and password combination (like email addresses), or an IP authenticator. You should already know how your proxy provider authenticates your proxies, because you’ve probably gone through the process. If not, just ask them.

The username/password authentication is akin to your grandma continually forgetting how to login into iTunes. Have you made sure your password and username values are known and correct? Your proxies will not work if they need to be authenticated and have the wrong account information.

That’s the simple version.

The more complex version is figuring out how to authenticate your proxies for different applications. ScrapeBox or GSA will have specific areas for you to enter your authentication information; they make this very simple. Some services, like IgersLike, will not allow you to authenticate your proxies through their interface. For those you’ll need to tell your proxy provider your IP so that it will be authenticated, or tell them your application.

Also, make sure to change your username and password semi-frequently. It’s the same principle as your bank account information. Identity theft is an issue, and scraping data in the proxy world is all too common. Whose to say your authentication info wasn’t scraped and now someone is using and burning out your proxies just because you haven’t changed a password in a year?

5. IP Authentication and Dynamic IPs

The other way this works is a proxy provider will authenticate your proxies via your IP address. This means you’ll give them your original IP address (the one provided by your ISP), and that will in turn allow the provider to enable the proxies just for you. This has the benefit of never needing to remember your password or username, while also making the stealing of that information obsolete.

However, some users have dynamic IP address from their ISPs, rather than static ones. A dynamic IP changes frequently, while a static one is, well, always the same. If you don’t know what you have, ask your ISP. If they tell you it’s a dynamic IP, your proxies are probably not working because the IP address you used to authenticate your proxies is no longer the same.
This one is a bit difficult for users because typically a dynamic IP address will change randomly. If your proxy provider must use IP authentication, ask your ISP if you can have a static IP. Or, conversely, ask your proxy provider if you can switch to Username/Password authentication.

6. Dead Proxies

Let’s face it, sometimes your proxies are dead. That’s why they’re not working properly. You can check the aliveness of proxies (which means a simple ping to see if they respond) fairly easily in a number of ways.

Use a site like ping.eu to test a single proxy. This will work well if you have a small batch of private proxies you want to test. If they are dead, contact your provider. Most of the time the provider will replace the dead ones with no cost or issue. Proxies tend to have some issues, so this is not uncommon. However, if you burn through your proxies frequently your provider might be less helpful.

If you have hundreds of private proxies to test, a site like that won’t be useful. You’re probably already using a tool like ScrapeBox to harvest lots of data, and you can usually use that same tool to see whether or not a proxy is alive. This will give you your results quickly and in bulk.

For the individuals using free public proxies know that they will “die” very often. Use ScrapeBox to find new free public proxies and continually run diagnostics to see if they are still viable.

7. Host Errors

Nobody is perfect, especially your proxy provider. In the world of technology sometimes things just don’t work as they should. If you’ve run all of the diagnostics above and still can’t find an issue, reach out to your provider. At the very least they will provide you with some new proxies, in which case you can run tests and get closer to the issue.

At best they will send a message that says something like, “Issue was on our end, apologies for the lost time.” That’s great news because it means you don’t have to worry about your settings or network connection.

If your proxy provider continually has this issue, you can ask for some free goods. More proxies, a free month, or access to some of their other services are all good ways to go. However, don’t get greedy or ask too soon. Most times a good provider will offer first.

The last and worst scenario is if your provider doesn’t ever respond or constantly has issues. At this point, you might want to find someone else.

Software Specific Issues

The above are more general things you can do to troubleshoot your proxy connections. If none of the above seem to be working, chances are there are specific settings in specific applications that you aren’t using correctly. Here are two of the more common ones.

8. Frequency Pings and Threads

Frequency pings and threads are two very important aspects of any application that continually uses proxies to harvest information. In most scenarios you plug in your proxies, set the data you want to harvest, and click “Go.” But if you “Go” too often (frequency pings) or on too many open connections (threads) your proxies will get banned and blacklisted, making them function incorrectly.

There are settings for this in both ScrapeBox and GSA. Set your ping frequency to have, at the lowest, 10-14 seconds of delay. You can bump this up much higher to further reduce the risk of your proxies getting banned.

For threads, you’ll want to keep just one thread open for 10-20 proxies. Some sites recommend more, others recommend keeping a 1:1 ratio. The safest bet is one thread per proxy, but only if you have a small number of proxies and threads. Opening additional threads has to do with your ISP, and you don’t want to piss them off either.

Setting ping time too low, or threads to high, is a sure way to get your proxies banned.

9. “Automatically Disable Bad Proxies on Use” for GSA

This is highly specific but common multi-pronged issue with the application GSA Proxy Scraper.

The crux of the matter is that when this setting — “Automatically Disable Bad Proxies on Use” — is checked, the program will, as it says, disable the use of those proxies. That means if there’s a dead connection, a temporary error, or anything that finds a specific proxy to not work, it will disable it.

First of all, check to see if this is checked and if you have any disabled proxies due to it. If you do but believe those proxies should be working fine, uncheck the box and reset your proxies. Do a test and see what happens. Paid proxies often blip out for a second or two, but GSA will misread that and disable the proxy, making you think it’s not working.

There’s another, more troubling component to this setting, which you can read about extensively in the GSA forums.

In Summary

It sure is a bummer when your proxies stop working, but there are plenty of simple explanations for why. Go through this list and try everything. If it still doesn’t work, consult technical forums, including the software you’re using, to get a specific solution. Remember that proxies can be finicky even on their best days, and troubleshooting all comes with the territory.

Sometimes your best bet is to just let it rest for a day and start again tomorrow.

The post 9 Reasons Your Proxies Stopped Working Correctly appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

Anonymity is the name of the game, and you’ve come here to figure out just what type of anonymity you need. Proxies and VPNs are very similar services on the surface. They can both grant you internet privacy and remove geo-location restrictions, and each method certifies you as a super cool, technology oriented government skeptic. You even get a classic V for Vendetta mask when you sign up for either service — no, wait, that’s something else.

While similar on the surface, there are actually a lot of important differences between proxies and VPNs. I’ll break up the differences below into major categories and compare how proxies and VPNs function.

If you’re one of those people that only reads the first three paragraph of an article before moving on, I’ll give you the bare bones differences now. VPNs are more private, more fully secure, and great for torrenting. Proxies are cheaper, more techy, and give you access to many IP addresses.

Technologically Speaking

While most readers will be more focused on how proxies and VPNs differ from a user-end standpoint, I do want to lay out important technological differences that will influence the rest of the article.

Without either service your computer directly accesses the internet, allowing your physical location and specific identifiers (your IP address) to travel with you over the whole web. A proxy or VPN places a middle-man between your computer and the internet so that the information you request and receive won’t be directly connected to your actual IP address.

Thus the anonymity.

Proxy and VPNs do this very similarly; they both sit in the middle of the request, they both hide your IP address, and they both relay the information back to you. The main difference is that a VPN requires a tunneling process, which establishes a direct and impenetrable connection to you and the VPN server. A proxy is just an open port that you can connect to; no tunnel is opened, and it’s not impenetrable.

Secondly, a proxy tends to be a singular IP address that anyone can connect to. If it’s a public proxy many people can connect to it because there’s no password and authentication, and it’s usually available on the web. Public proxies are, generally speaking, not safe and shouldn’t be used. A paid private proxy can technically still be accessed by multiple people, but if you pay for an individual elite proxy, only you (and your provider) will have the credentials to access it.

A VPN will always require a login and authentication, and you will be assigned your IP address through the VPN server.

Security and Real Privacy

The above already touches on some of the big differences between VPNs and proxies. The first I’ll discuss is security and real privacy, as these are the core tenants of what most people want out of the technology.

Proxies

Proxies are billed as super secure and private because they hide your IP address. This is true, but it’s not quite that simple. The proxy technology will always do the basic job of replacing your IP address — a “proxy” itself is just another IP address you are connecting to, and it shows websites its own IP address instead of yours.

However there are multiple types of proxies, and each of them has specific security and privacy pluses and minuses.

• Free proxies. These will advertise anonymity, but they don’t really provide it. Free proxies and their providers often keep logs of your activity, do a poor job of hiding your IP address for more complex websites, and are notoriously slow. They can also install malware on your computer and track information you enter (like credit card and login info), so they’re not actually safe or private at all.
• Elite private proxies. These you will pay for, and with that money comes the chance for legitimate privacy. A good proxy provider will not keep logs of your activity (though it can), ensure that your IP address stays hidden no matter what website you are visiting, and is reliable.

These are the two main types, but there’s another, more technical factor to consider. Proxies are typically sold in three main formats: HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS.

Each of these functions differently when it comes to security.

• This is the most basic, and therefore least secure. Most private providers supply HTTP proxies by default, and while they will hide your IP address or your geo-location well enough, it isn’t recommended to trust them for ultra sensitive information, like bank account passwords.
• This is the more secure version of HTTP, and you’ll see many padlocked sites with HTTPS in the URL. This has become synonymous with a secure site. HTTPS proxies are typically more expensive and harder to find, but allow for more security.
• This is technically a different kind of protocol, and allows for completely secure transactions. SOCKS is typically the technology that VPNs are built on, so if you purchase SOCKS proxies, you will have the secure functions of a VPN without the whole network.

VPNs

As you can hopefully tell (you’re paying attention, right?), VPNs are more secure and private than proxies. From a technological standpoint they are essentially closed systems, and you can only access them with permission.

All traffic on your computer is hidden and private due to the tunneling method, which means governments and advertisers (your two greatest enemies) won’t be able to see what you’re browsing, downloading, or doing online.

If security is your main concern, go with a VPN.

The Caveat

The above is true for reputable paid VPNs, like TorGuard and Private Internet Access. However, there are two large issues that have come up with VPN networks, both paid and free.

The first is logging. While outside sources can’t see what you’re browsing and downloading, your VPN provider can if they so choose. You’ll want to sign up with services that explicitly say they don’t keep logs, and have testimonials by major companies to back that up.

The second is less about your own privacy, and more about the actions taken with your internet connection. There are free VPNs — one of the most popular is Hola. As you can imagine, a free VPN is going to keep logs, so that’s an issue straight away.

The other issue with free services, Hola in particular, is how much access they have to your to your internet connection. In Hola’s case, the user agreement you sign to use the free software includes a specific clause that says Hola can use your bandwidth however they want. In effect they sell your bandwidth to the highest bidder, which can result in malicious activities like DDoS attacks.

VPNs are usually based on peer-to-peer connections, which is what makes this possible. A paid service should never do this, but a free one often will — that’s why it’s free.

Connection and Encryption

One of the main differences between proxies and a VPN is how they connect to the internet.

Proxies

Proxies only connect to the internet through web traffic and requests. Most of your connection to the internet is based on web browsing, so this works for most users. However, it means that your IP address and activity is only protected when you are using the internet for web browsing purposes. This includes using proxies with software that scrape the web, because they are reaching out to URLs to retrieve information.

The downside is that this is limiting. It’s one of the reasons proxies aren’t a comprehensive solution to privacy and security, because we often connect to the internet in many more ways than a web browser.

VPNs

VPNs are much more comprehensive. A VPN service is not just an IP address and port you type into a software application or browser, but typically software you download and activate. VPN providers make the setup of this software easy. It’s about as complicated as setting up Dropbox — you just log in and turn the service on. Once you do this, all your internet-based traffic is encrypted, private, and not reachable by outside sources.

Speed

Connection speed can be an issue with both proxies and VPNs. By using either service you are placing a middle-man between you and the internet. If that middle-man resembles a DMV employee, it’s going to be a real slow day. Making sure your speeds are at least on par with your ISP speeds is important in either scenario, and most providers will state their speeds in very obvious places.

Proxies

Proxies tend to be faster than VPNs when using private, paid proxies. When this is the case, you have the pure, unfettered speeds your provider was selling to you, because you’re the only one accessing the proxy. This should only show up as a tiny slow-down when browsing.

However, if you’re using a free proxy, expect abysmal speeds. The same can be true for paid shared proxies, because anytime multiple users are on a single proxy, the amount of available speed goes down significantly.

VPNs

A great VPN is plenty fast, but due to the structure of the network they can be slower than proxies. The VPN functions as a giant hub, often in a peer-to-peer structure, so their speeds decrease during peak use hours. This matters if you’re a typical American that watches popular shows on Netflix at 8PM every night. You’ll experience slower speeds because everyone is using the service at that time.

Some networks are large enough to overcome this, which is one of the reasons getting a high-ranked VPN is important.

Common Uses

This is an important measure when it comes to proxies and VPNs, and I’ve already covered a number of use-cases above. I’ll mention some very clear things that each method has going for it so you, my dear reader, are sure in your decision.

Proxies

Proxies are best for individuals that want to hide web traffic, use scraping and social media tools, and be techy with the process. If you enjoy typing an IP address and password into your system settings and web browsers, proxies are for you.

Beyond hiding your IP and specific geographical location, proxies are best suited to those who use software to scrape massive amounts of data. These users usually burn through proxies and buy them in batches of 10-1000, using ScrapeBox and GSA SER to do a number of web tricks.

This functionality makes proxies best for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and hackers (some of you are all three), because you aren’t tied to a single proxy or service and there are specific tools designed for you.

VPNs

These are best for casual users that want privacy, no geo-location restrictions, and torrenting capability. VPNs are the more recognized of these two in the general public because they are best for casual users.

They are not techy; as I’ve said, VPNs usually provide software for you to install and enable, thus opening up your computer to their service. You can torrent freely with these services, but only do this if your VPN doesn’t keep logs. Otherwise you’ll potentially get sued some day.

VPNs are the best at getting around geo-location issues because they route all of your traffic through their system, rather than only web traffic. Sometimes that other traffic can be detected by certain websites, making your geo-location efforts null and void.

Cost

We’re at the last and final piece of this comparison. Price is probably pretty important to you. The good news is that neither VPNs nor proxies have to be expensive. The services I’ve mentioned or linked to above should run you anywhere from $3-$25 per month, depending on the level of access you need.

There are free models for both, but as I’ve said, these are not anonymous, secure, fast, or respected. They are free though, and you’re free to use them.

Proxies 

Due to the more technical, singular nature of proxies, on the whole they are cheaper for what you get. A single proxy per month will cost as much as a VPN service, so that’s not really the comparison I’m talking about. Most proxy users will want at least 10 proxies, if not hundreds. The costs for these obviously go up into very large chunks of cash, but you can get 10 proxies for between $20-30 per month.

That will allow you to run your tests, keep your anonymity, and get a refresh of proxies when you need them.

VPNs

VPNs today are very inexpensive for base plans. Private Internet Access often has deals that make it about $3.50 a month for their basic services, which include the software, solid connection speeds, and unfettered access. There are a number of excellent providers, each with slightly different clientele in mind.

VPNs are really the way to go for non-technical, non-business oriented people, and they cost less than a typical content subscription, like Netflix or Hulu.

Summing It Up

VPNs and proxies are similar beasts with very different use points. This guide hopefully clears up your confusion. I do want to note, though, that each of these services can get much more complicated if you continue to dive in. If this sort of thing fascinates you, continue to read as much as you can, and start experimenting.

The post What’s The Difference Between a Proxy and a VPN? appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

In the world of online sales and resales, eBay is king. You can find pretty much anything on the site, and many people make entire careers out of the money gleaned from small business sales. Of course, you don’t have to actually produce something to sell it—you just have to own that thing.

Over the years a large community has grown on eBay built entirely around buying items below what they’re worth, then selling them at a higher price. If this sounds like your typical yard sale, estate sale, or flea market, then you know what I’m talking about. That’s exactly what this is, but because these sales are conducted over the internet, there’s a bit more tech running the show.

The most typical way that tech is used in the above scenario is through auction sniping. This is the process in which an automated service or program automatically bids in the very final seconds of an auction. There are plenty of services that you can pay to do this, or individual software programs you can download. For the most part this is allowed (and encouraged in a way) by eBay. It doesn’t thwart their rules and many members do it.

But the lenience and good will stops there. eBay is known as one of the more ruthless companies when it comes to suspending or banning accounts. These bans can last a very long time (as in, forever), and can happen for a number of reasons, as defined in its long list of rule violations.

You’re here because you want to avoid these bans, and I’m here to tell you how to do that with proxies, specifically. I’ll get into that below, but first a word of warning.

eBay Proxy Warning

If I wasn’t clear a moment ago with the word “ruthless“ you need to be paying better attention. The reality is that eBay, which is owned by PayPal, is one of the strictest and most unforgiving companies out there when it comes to bans. The service is inherently built around exchanging goods for money, so it is imperative to eBay that you are a real person or business with real goods, or a real buyer of those goods.

This warning is therefore more important than other proxy warnings, and is actually more complicated, too. Sometimes you don’t even have to be using proxies to get an account suspended or banned—the red flags will go up if you try to buy or sell too many items at once, or if you break some other part of the rules. Doing this often elicits gasps of pain and confusion from legitimate sellers who then have to spend days or weeks working with eBay to undo an error, or pay for their misuse.

When eBay bans or suspends your account, it bases the ban on IP the computer and account is associated with, your email address on the account, the physical address on the account, and the name on the account. This means that if you’re in a shared household and get your account banned, everyone in that house will also be banned, because you share an IP. It also means all those legitimate identifiers you used are now not available.

Often this sort of blanket banning leads to overt frustration, which you might be feeling at this very moment.

The complex part of this is that the best way to go about getting back into eBay is using proxies, because proxies by nature change your IP address. However, when using proxies to get around an eBay suspension or ban:

• You’ll have to get more than a different IP, you’ll probably need a different address, email account, and name, too.
• It’s frowned upon. eBay wants real people to use its site, not robots. Proxies are robots with people behind them.
• It’s potentially more dangerous. If you decide to go the proxy route because you’ve already been banned, you can get in a lot of trouble if you get caught. If you start off with proxies you’re in a better boat, but eBay will deal with you harshly if it’s ever traced back to you.

The warning is clear, yes? The best case scenario is to actually start your whole eBay account, business, selling/buying scheme with a proxy in the first place, so if you do get banned you can move around more easily.

With that in mind, here’s how to use proxies to sell and buy on eBay while avoiding bans.

Smart Proxy Use on eBay to Avoid Bans

The first thing to know about using proxies on eBay is that you have to be diligent. It’s not as simple as signing up for a VPN service or purchasing a batch of proxies and then acting however you want, buying and selling at lightning speeds through multiple accounts. You have to be persistent and dedicated with your proxy use on eBay.

Keep Your IPs in Line

One of the biggest red flags for eBay is when an account is accessed from different IP addresses frequently. I’m not talking about three IP addresses in three days, though that still raises some suspicion. An easy way to get suspended on a single account is to access that account for purchasing or selling 50 times in a single day, each with a different IP address.

No human can do that. With that sort of activity it becomes overtly obvious to eBay that you’re account is either being hacked all over the world, or you’re using a bank of proxies to do your buying and selling.

This is a backwards mentality for most proxy users and is one of the reasons eBay is so difficult to deal with. Often many proxies is the best case scenario — like in domain harvesting, you want to use as many IPs as possible so it can’t be traced back to you. This is not the case for eBay.

The Solution

The issue with eBay is that you’re accessing a single account.

If you want to use a proxies (which I do recommend) keep the number of IPs per account to 1-2 proxies. Make sure these proxy IP addresses stay the same, or are at least consistent enough that they won’t trigger eBay. Many ISPs use Dynamic IPs, which means they constantly change. If this is your case, email eBay to ask what the best solution is, and use their response to help you figure out a day-to-day plan for your Dynamic IP, but also use the response for your proxy plan.

The second solution: If you want to use multiple IPs, create multiple accounts. This can get tricky because theoretically each account has to be linked to a human, and if you list the same identifiers on multiple accounts eBay will link all those together, and instead of getting one account banned all of them will be shut down.

I recommend reading through “How to Beat an eBay Suspension 2015“ by John Martin for learning more about multiple accounts. Actually, the book is excellent for all manner of eBay tricks, and it’s worth it just to see how eBay functions.

Choose a Great Proxy Service

It makes a lot of sense to set up and use proxies for eBay, but as I’ve said, you have to do it wisely and slowly. One of the ways to do this is find a proxy provider that has your back.

Shop around for providers that specifically list eBay proxies as one of their offerings, or have special sections on how their services work in conjunction with eBay.

One provider that has a reputation for this is a site like 24vc.com, though it’s more of a VPN than a private proxy service. You can read through the site’s documentation as a reference if you’re looking for a different kind of service.

VPNs work well for eBay because they are typically a single IP address that is anonymous, which eBay likes overall. However, most VPNs will not grant you a new IP address whenever you want, because that’s not how VPNs function. When looking for a VPN, find one that is open to changing your IP address when needed.

Fresh IPs

One of the benefits you’ll see in 24vc, and many other proxy providers have this, is “virgin“ or fresh IPs. This means IPs that have never been used before, and therefore won’t be banned outright by eBay and other companies. This is an important rule for all proxy use, not just eBay, but it matters most for strict sites that will ban accounts if their IP addresses don’t line up.

For eBay I recommend always using a virgin IP, and using one for each account you have, and only registering and accessing each account with that specific IP address. As you can maybe tell this gets complicated, but hacking the eBay system is no easy feat.

The Don’ts

After keeping your IP’s in check and using a good proxy provider, you’re definitely on the right path to buying and selling on eBay with proxies. I’ll outline hard and fast don’ts below, because sometimes you just need to be told explicitly what not to do. (You know who you are!)

Don’t Use Free Proxies

This is a big no-no. Free proxies are great because they’re free, right? There are huge lists of them online and you can even check to make sure they’re available. Well, they’re free because they’re infested with crawler software and will get banned in about 24 hours.

eBay has one of the largest IP blacklists in the world, and you can bet any free proxy you might use is already on there. What happens when you sell or buy an item with a blacklisted IP? Say it with me: “You get banned!“

Don’t Use Shared Proxies

The same general principle applies here. You can purchase shared private proxies at a discounted rate, but you’ll pay the price later with a big fat ban. Even if they’re technically private, shared proxies are by definition not virgin proxies (they are being used by other people right now), and they probably carry some stigma.

Even if they work for a time, you can’t know what your other proxy-mates are doing with that shared proxy, and if it’s illegal stuff the proxy will eventually get banned.

Shared proxies work for a handful of activities online, but not eBay.

Don’t Be Stupid

Listen, the reality is that if you’re using any sort of proxy, hacking, or stealth moves with eBay you’re probably going to get suspended or banned at some point. The system is that strong. If this happens to you, take a small break. It may sound like defeat, but it’s not. eBay punishes those who push hardest. If you get a suspension or ban and then proceed to buy a bunch of half-rate proxies, open 10 more accounts, buy and sell like mad, all within a week of your original issue, the odds of ever using eBay again are not good.

Give yourself a breather and do more research so that when you get back into the game you have a clearer idea of how to succeed.

That About Does It

I don’t have much more on this subject, mostly because eBay is so intense about their banning and suspensions. Please take all that I’ve said with a grain of salt, and know that the best way to do this is to use eBay as legitimately and naturally as you can. That said, smart proxy providers are the best way to get ahead. Good luck!

The post Shopping and Selling on eBay with Proxies to Avoid Bans appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

The internet-age old question: Are paid proxies better than free proxies? What do you think? What does your gut tell you? What usually happens when the same general product is available for free, and also at a cost?

Instinctually we know that there must be some value in the service to start with, or else people wouldn’t use it at all. In the case of proxies, that service is anonymity in online browsing. This is a huge benefit for pretty much everyone, especially those of us who don’t want to be traced by our governments and sold to by the world’s corporations. Proxies can protect us from those negative things, while also opening up hundreds of doors that lead down very different paths.

These paths get complicated, dark, illegal, eye-opening, and completely drenched in the technical makeup of our modern world. However, the room that you stand in at the very beginning, the one with all the doors leading out, is based on anonymity. That’s what proxies are synonymous with, and what you should care about most.
So, paid or free?

The reality is that, in your heart of hearts (or your brain of brains), you know that paid proxies are better. Better for anonymity, and better for everything else. They’re not just better, but leaps and bounds better.

I get it, you still want to know why. I’ll tell you why.

The Basics

If you’re legitimately considering which of these two proxies is better, you’re going to want to understand the basics of the technology. When you have a computer and pay for internet access, you send your bills to an Internet Service Provider (ISP), like Comcast or AT&T in the U.S. This ISP comes to your house and installs internet, providing you with a modem and router. You hook up to the internet via an ethernet cable or WiFi and in a matter of seconds you’re surfing the web.

This point of internet access, the literal cable running to your house, is assigned an IP address. This is a locational number, just like a physical address. It lets everyone know where you are on an internet map. You can check your IP address easily online at sites like WhatIsMyIPAddress. When you browse the internet, every single website you visit registers that IP address — in short, anyone can see what your address is, they just have to look.

A lot of people don’t like this sort of exposure. Similar to renting a P.O. box so that your actual address is not easily accessible, a proxy is a buffer between the internet and your IP address.

This works in a couple different ways depending on the method of proxy, but you can visualize it best with a simple diagram. Your computer is on the right. It connects to the internet, making a request to the world. A proxy sits in the middle, it receives your request to the world. The proxy then requests the same information to the internet, which is on the far left. The internet answers the proxy’s call for information and transmits it back to the proxy. The proxy then disseminates the information back to you.

In normal circumstances there would be no proxy and the request would go back and forth, exposing you. The proxy is a bouncer that keeps your identity hidden, while you still get all the information you were looking for.

That, in a nutshell, is how proxies work.

Free Proxies: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

With a basic understanding of the technology, it’s key to think about the proxy as the middle man who is receiving requests from you and passing them along. The proxy, and the person who owns or controls the proxy, has access to your original IP address, the requests you’re making, and all the information you type in.

That’s a lot of information for a person or company to have, and in many ways is the reason you got the proxy in the first place — to hide all that stuff.

The Good

When you seek out free proxies, you are essentially looking around the internet for someone who is hosting a proxy at no cost to you. These can typically be found by simply typing “Free proxy lists” into Google. Two of the most common are HideMyAss’ free proxy list, and Free Proxy Lists’ list (they got their SEO right). Both are updated frequently and have helpful sorting tools, like what country the proxy is in, how responsive it is, and how anonymous it is. All of these are excellent measures for determining if it’s a proxy you want to use. Yes, every proxy listed is free.

The IPs and ports are right there; you can copy and paste them into your browser’s proxy settings and voila, your IP is hidden.

You’re thinking to yourself, “Great! This is exactly what I wanted.” It is, but only sort of. You can do a decent job of scouring free lists for anonymous proxies from good countries (don’t use the proxies from China, for instance), and they will work for you.

The best-case scenario for free proxies is using them to harvest data with a software application like ScrapeBox. You enter the massive list of proxies, check with the software to find the ones that are working, and use those proxies to go about harvesting URLs, keywords, and other metrics across the internet.

This works decently well because you’re not actually entering any sensitive information by using ScrapeBox to harvest those metrics. You are using the proxy at its most basic — just to hide your IP address, which it is doing well for the time being.

The Bad

The above is just about the only decent use of free proxies. Even that process comes with some issues, and these issues open up a can of worms that will leave you ready to puke.

The puking will happen in The Ugly section. Below are the three main reasons free proxies are bad.

1. Inconsistent and burn out quickly. What happens when your middle-man proxy gets set on fire and ceases to respond or exist? That’s the “burning out,” which any proxy can go through. Free proxies tend to burn out extremely quickly, often because they’re being hosted by strange anonymous people all over the world. Maybe their proxy server went out, maybe they unplugged the internet. Who knows. The point is that you can’t ever trust a free proxy to work, and if it does work, it won’t for very long.
2. Crowded and slow. The free proxy lists above aren’t hand-crafted for your eyes only. They are free for everyone, so everyone is copying the same proxies into their software programs or Word docs. This means that even if you are using a free proxy and it’s working relatively well, at any time 1-1000 people (or more) could jump on that free proxy. This will slow down the speed at which your proxy transfers information back and forth, so say goodbye to television shows, quick downloads, or pictures loading on Facebook.
3. Ads and altered websites. Free proxies are often free because they have code that will make certain ads show up during your browsing that shouldn’t be there. They do this by slightly altering the HTLM and JavaScript of the web, so you’re actually seeing something different than you should.
4. Have stigma. Negative connotations in society is one thing, but many free proxies have already been used for nefarious purposes, like DDoS attacks and other hacks. This means the proxy IP address you’re using has a lot of negative associations. Sites like eBay, PayPal, Ticketmaster, and others will have already blacklisted your proxy IP address. This will limit your browsing greatly.

The Ugly

If the above reasons don’t concern you, the following will. Remember how proxies are all about anonymity? Well, the tricky thing is that proxies typically have the ability to see all of your data because you’re directly connected to them. It’s up to the proxy provider to decide how malicious they will be, and many of them have created free proxies with the sole intent of being malicious.

When you use a free proxy, you have absolutely no idea who that proxy belongs to, and what sort of intentions they have. Here are four examples:

1. Logging records. HTTP proxies have the ability to log records of your internet usage. So, just when you thought all those activities were private, this unknown provider could be keeping tabs on everything you do.
2. Stealing your information. Let’s say you’re using a free proxy and decide to check your bank account. You have to input your login information. Whenever you enter any login information (or any other information) the free proxy could be saving it in its own database. This is a common way to steal credit card numbers and hack people’s accounts
3. Identity theft. Step No. 2 correlates directly to this. If a free proxy provider saves thousands of points of data every time you use the internet, they’ll be able to start stealing your identity pretty easily.
4. Infested with malware. Sometimes free proxies have malware embedded in them, which will get in your computer and wreak havoc.

Many of these ugly tactics can be avoided by only using free proxies in select scenarios, but doing so requires a lot of effort. The best way is to not use them at all.

Paid Private Proxies

Nothing is perfect in this world, and I’m not here to tell you paid private proxies will solve any and all qualms in the internet world. No, they won’t. But they will take care of nearly every issue above, and greatly increase the speed, accessibility, and ease-of-use when it comes to proxies.

The main aspect of paid private proxies is that they are dedicated to you and your needs. You are not just paying for security and speed, but also for the help of a technically versed provider. Often these providers have comprehensive FAQ sections, 24/7 customer support, and can troubleshoot problems with you. This is not possible with free proxies, and is great for beginners.

The Costs and Types of Private Proxies

The biggest concern for you is cost, and I totally understand that. Is it worth paying for a proxy service? The answer is entirely dependent on you and your needs. Do you want to browse anonymously and securely? Do you want to download torrents without being caught? Do you want to start engaging in more complex SEO and social media tactics? All of these are great reasons to jump on the private proxy train.

The reality is that private proxies don’t have to be expensive. You can get a single private proxy for $2-4 per month, or batches of 10-15 for $20-25 per month. That cost can increase, but you probably won’t need that many. Paying for 5-10 is best to start, because you’ll get enough to switch them out occasionally, and paying for a single proxy is pretty expensive compared to a few of them.

This monthly fee can be likened to a Netflix charge, a phone bill, or car insurance, except most of the time it’s cheaper than all that. If you need online anonymity, pay for it. It’s pretty simple.

Once you’ve decided to pay for it, you’ll want to figure out what kind of proxy you want. Many providers offer HTTP proxies, which are good for general browsing and applications like ScrapeBox. However, these do not provide as much security. HTTPS and SOCKS proxies provide much more security, and are used by those truly concerned with privacy. Ask or look around for providers that offer HTTPS and SOCKS proxies.

Qualities of The Best Providers

Lastly, you should know a few things about good proxy providers. This is as important as choosing paid over free, because your proxy provider will be your gateway to this world, and therefore have some access to your information.

Check to see how many proxies they have on tap, and if they refresh your proxies monthly. This will make sure you continue to stay anonymous, decreasing overall risk for you. Customer support and an integrated or custom API are also important.

Bottom Line

Go the paid proxy route. It doesn’t have to put a huge dent in your wallet and the amount of anonymity you’ll get is absolutely worth it. While privacy is important, you’re also paying for speed, access, versatility, and consumer reliability. Good luck and keep proxying.

The post Are Paid Proxies Really That Much Better Than Free Proxies? appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

Do you proxy? You must, because you’re here, wondering what the difference is between residential and datacenter proxies, which is a pretty specific line of questioning. You most likely saw the discrepancy on Black Hat Forum when searching out new providers. Large bold type advertised 100% residential IPs, and how much better they are than those corporate stooges, the datacenter proxies.

So, what is the difference?

There’s a simple answer, and a complicated one. The simple answer: Residential proxies are IP addresses from a standard Internet Service Provider (ISP), often DSL or cable, that are wired directly into your home. Datacenter proxies are IP addresses that come from a secondary corporation and are not located in your home.

If you’re satisfied with that you can stop reading, but I’m guessing you want to know not just the basic differences between the two, but how they affect your proxy use. I’ll get into the specifics below while outlining some common issues in the field.

Residential IPs, Expanded

As I said above, residential IPs come from an ISP. In the U.S. there are a notorious few number of providers (all of whose speeds suffer), but the fact remains that they will actually provide you with a connection to the internet. This also means they will provide you with an IP address, and that IP address will be registered as coming from that ISP.

I’ll use Comcast as an example. You call up Comcast and ask them to install internet at your house. The person comes and checks on your wires and tries to sell you a router you don’t need, and after that you can log onto the internet and browse with ease. If you browse to an IP locator website, like WhatIsMyIPAddress, you will see your IP address appear. Next to or below the number — which will look something like 88.99.77.666 or 888.99.77.666 — you’ll see your IP details. This will usually constitute your location, a map of your location, and your ISP provider name. In short, your IP address says a lot about you.

This is your residential IP address. Everyone has to have one, whether you’re a business or individual. If you’re on the internet, said internet has to be provided by somebody.

Proxies and Datacenters, Expanded

The datacenter IP addresses are the IP addresses not affiliated with an ISP, and they don’t provide you with internet. Instead, they hide or change the IP address that a site like WhatIsMyIPAddress sees. To those in the know, this datacenter IP concept sounds essentially the same as proxies as a whole. That’s because, for the most part, it is.

There are arguably many points in using a proxy, but the most basic and universal is anonymity. In my above example, if I’m using Comcast as my ISP, anyone can see roughly where I live based on the IP address provided. Not only where I live, but who I pay on a regular basis, and what my specific computer address is. That’s a lot of information out in the world.

Thus we invented proxies, because people don’t want their information out in the world. A proxy IP address has historically been created and stored in datacenters around the world. It provides users with a different IP address so that when someone searches the specific locale of your internet browsing, or tries to scrape your data, they won’t be able to trace it back to your ISP and actual IP address. This establishes a solid wall between your actual computer life and the computer life you browse the internet with.

These datacenter proxies, often supplied by a provider whose services you pay for, deliver anonymity in batches. The proxies themselves can be rotated so that over the course of a month you can have 10-100 different IP addresses, all of which are not traceable back to you. Anonymity at its finest.

The Discrepancy

The question then becomes, what is the problem? If you get internet from your ISP and mask the IP address with datacenter proxies, there should be no cause for concern. Except, in today’s overbearing technology-laden world, there’s huge concern.

Proxies are used systematically to scrape information, spam websites, and perform all sorts of potentially damaging attacks on individuals and corporations. They are also used by those big corporations (and individuals) to do things in a positive way, but that’s not the point right now.

Due to the negative associations of proxy use it has become common for larger corporations and entities, like Google, Facebook, and Netflix, to systematically search potential proxy users and ban their associated IPs. As such, datacenter proxies are the first on the chopping block. The theory is that a resident IP address is, most likely, a normal individual browsing the internet. That person is who these companies want on the internet. The moment it’s a potential proxy, there is cause for concern.

Of course I’m highlighting the most extreme circumstances here, as proxies, especially datacenter proxies, are used in the millions every day by individuals, companies, hackers, the government, etc. Not all datacenter proxies will be banned, but it’s one factor of many that goes into whether or not a company will ban an IP address.

The main way to judge this is what the “provider name” on that lookup form is — if it’s a country-based ISP like Comcast, you are less likely to be judged as a proxy hacker bot. If it’s some corporation that can be traced to a datacenter, it’s the first in a long line of potential red flags that could get your IP address banned by a site or company.

The Birth of Residential IP Proxies

For people that want extreme stealth and one less chance of being blacklisted, residential IP proxies seem like a no-brainer. Except they’re a bit complicated to actually procure. For traditional residential IPs, you live or work at the specific physical address — thus your are a resident of that place. If you want to buy somebody’s residence without living in that country — say a Brazilian resident wanting to use a residential IP address in the U.S. — how does that work?

The simplest solution is for someone in a location to order a high-end connection to the internet and set up a proxy service with their residential IP address. Except this is not going to go over with your ISP. Actually, in essence, this is what a proxy datacenter consists of, but of course they don’t lie to the ISP and claim they are just a normal person using the internet. The two are mutually exclusive, and both ISPs and major corporations want to keep it that way.

Yet you will find businesses online selling residential proxies (at a steep price), claiming no datacenter scum IP ever enters their database. Is this possible?

Honestly, it’s a bit unclear. One such service is IAPS Security Services, LLC, which has a long and storied thread on Black Hat World. The company offers a residential VPN, which is similar to private proxies, and offers them in a huge number of countries, claiming to work on legitimate terms with the ISPs themselves. This does seem like it could work — a company contracting with ISPs for direct residential IPs, and then selling them as proxies or a VPN network. If this were easy and possible, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?

There are many curious customers that question the legitimacy of IAPS Security Services, but there are also many people that use it. At the not-so-casual price of $50 per month, this is an expensive option.

There are other residential proxy services that claim to distribute proxies (as opposed to a VPN), and the reality of their legitimacy lies behind a barrage of complicated tech. It’s hard to tell if the company is really selling individual house connections, or just using datacenter proxies and hiding certain aspects of their location.

I advise you to do copious amounts of research in this area, and about a specific company, if you’re looking at purchasing residential IPs. Are you sure you need them in the first place? Elite Proxy claims all residential IPs are a scam, and reminds us that if we use an elite private proxy correctly, security shouldn’t be an issue.

The Case of Hola and Luminati

There is one unique player in this field — Luminati. Yes, the name brings to mind the secret cult described in “The Da Vinci Code,” and the evil world-bending conniption actually seems to fit in this example.

For those that don’t know, Hola is the world’s most popular free VPN. You can sign up and use the service for free forever, and with a click it will install itself as an extension on your browser. This will let you bypass geo-restrictions so you can watch Netflix from whatever country you want (among other things).

I won’t get into the technical aspects of the software, but know that when you decide to sign up and install the Hola software, it opens a permanent port to your IP address. This is all spelled out in the user agreement, so you actually agree to open your computer to the company. This means, in essence, that Hola can use your IP address (usually your residential IP address) for its own purposes.

In 2015 Hola was brought into the public eye for creating a botnet out these proxies, which numbered in the millions. The company sells this data to the highest bidder, and was traced back to a DDoS attack. That outing didn’t slow Hola down. In fact, it gave them an idea and a new business model.

Luminati is a company directly owned and operated in conjunction with Hola, and it allows anyone to utilize this 13 million IP network for their own purposes. If you go to the Luminati website you’ll find a straightforward and very expensive sales pitch: purchase our 13-million-strong residential IP network for a minimum of $500 USD per month.

If this sounds ridiculous and messed up, it is. But it’s also spelled out in clear terms in the user agreement of Hola, so those using Hola don’t know or don’t care that their IP addresses are being siphoned off to the highest bidder.

The funny part about all of this is that, inversely, Luminati seems to be the only thoroughly legitimate source of residential IPs. Of course, that’s only if you don’t care that they’re sourced from unsuspecting (but fully participating) users.

In The End

When it comes down to it, you shouldn’t really be concerned about purchasing residential IP proxies. If you’re that worried about being found out, it probably means you’re doing something illegal. Most illegal actions require a great deal of technical expertise. The same expertise will enable you to stay relatively safe with an elite private proxy that comes from a datacenter.

If you absolutely need a residential IP, consider some of the resources above. Do your research before you fork up the cash, and make sure you know why you need the service in the first place.

The post The Difference Between Residential and Datacenter Proxies appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

What used to be associated with black hat practice has, in recent years, become common for every day people. VPNs and private proxies became a tool for the masses.

Few of those masses actually had the technical understanding to operate either platforms, which means developers have been hard at work to create interfaces that are easy to understand and quick to use.

For those most part, this has worked, especially for VPNs.

However, it doesn’t mean that the number of people actually using VPNs or private proxies have a real grasp on how they work.

You just might, because you’re here, having trolled the web for detailed information on the differences between private proxies and VPNs, which one you need, and, more specifically, how to use both of them in conjunction.

I’ll briefly explain the similarities and differences between VPNs and private proxies for context, then dive into why one might need both at the same time, and how to use them in conjunction.

VPNs and Private Proxies: How Are They The Same?

Well, they are, and they aren’t. It’s not a strict answer because each similarity has a slight difference.

This is typically what happens where technology is concerned. Users want a great degree of functionality, and developed each of these methods to achieve those very specific functions.

Privacy

VPNs and private proxies were made to hide your IP address from snooping eyes, change your geolocation, and generally browse the web anonymously.

They do this by opening a secondary receiving point for your internet access. Instead of you sending out a request to the Internet directly, the VPN or proxy receives the request, processes it, then sends it out on your behalf. It also sends the information back to you in that way.

On a basic level this means your request was never sent by you, which is why proxies and VPNs are touted as security features.

Paid and Free Versions

Each service has paid and free options, and in both cases I recommend paid every single time. If you go the free route you open yourself up to malware, questionable contracts, and a much slower connection.

Making the investment for proxies is a real step — if you’re running a business you have to crunch the numbers, and if you’re getting one (or both) for personal purposes you’ll need to look at it like another entertainment subscription, i.e. Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Versatile

While each method has its own specific uses, both private proxies and VPNs are very versatile. They can be tweaked in a huge number of ways to function for multiple purposes at once, fulfilling roles for many different practices, like torrenting, scraping data and running marketing campaigns where anonymity is what’s necessary.

With all this versatility and similarity in mind, it is the differences that makes VPNs and private proxies specific to different kinds of users. It’s also the differences that make both of them necessary to use at the same time for certain scenarios.

Private Proxies and VPN Differences

When thinking about using each of these at the same time, it’s important to understand the differences. These are, in many ways, the reason one would want to use both services.

One IP vs Many IPs

The main difference between proxies and VPNs is the number of IPs you’re buying.

With proxies, you are literally paying for one or more IP addresses that you can access. About 99% of the time people buy more than one — that’s kind of the whole point. Private proxies often come in batches of 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 and up, and that number literally corresponds to an IP address.

VPNs are the exact opposite. Most of the time the VPN service you’re using will give you just one IP address that is different than your own. This IP address can sometimes be changed upon request, but it’s rare that you’ll get one that changes frequently, or a batch of them to use.

This difference is huge and is the genesis for many other differences, but it’s also the reason using both VPNs and proxies is a good idea in certain scenarios.

Browser Traffic vs. All Traffic

One of the main differences between VPNs and private proxies is what type of traffic they’re able to receive and send.

Proxies

Proxies were designed to only work with browser-based traffic. That means Chrome, Firefox and the like all work with standard HTTP and HTTPS proxies (SOCKS is different).

Browser-based traffic is very important, and what a lot of users are looking for, but as you can probably tell it’s a little limiting.

VPNs

On the flip side are VPNs, which works for all your internet traffic. That includes traffic from software applications on your computer, your internet browsers and more — VPNs can receive the information from every part of your computer and send it back to you.

Anonymous vs. Secure

The third and final major difference between proxies and VPNs is the difference between anonymity and security.

Anonymity does not imply security.

Proxies

Proxies provide anonymity. They hide your IP address and, as I said before, you get huge batches of IP addresses to continually keep yourself anonymous. You rotate them out when they’re burnt, or just because you need to keep them from being traced. This hides your actual IP address.

However, this anonymity isn’t totally safe, and therefore it’s not secure. The data transferred between your browser, the proxy, and the internet is not encrypted, which means it can be looked by anyone with enough tools. This could be a hacker, or it could be the NSA.

In most cases proxies are enough to keep the digital hounds off your back, but if you’re performing more sensitive acts with information you really don’t want to go public, turn to VPNs.

VPNs

As you can probably guess, VPNs are secure. The connection process for VPNs is based on different technology, which means the connection you make to the VPN, and that the VPN makes to the internet, is inherently encrypted.

This is due to the singular, impenetrable tunnel created when you open the VPN connection. Thus, all your data is safe.

One caveat: the VPN itself can read your data, because it has to decrypt it in the middle to send it back to you. This makes it essential to find a VPN service that doesn’t keep logs — if you don’t, you might find yourself in the midst of a lawsuit.

Using Private Proxies and a VPN Simultaneously

With some clarity on these differences the purpose for using both a VPN and multiple private proxies at the same time is hopefully becoming clear.

Basically, you can perform different actions with each service, and therefore a person who downloads a lot of questionable material, utilizes scrapers heavily, and dabbles in the deep world of internet usage will need both.

Doing this can have its complexities, but overall is simpler than you might think.

Turning Everything On and Off

There is no rule that says once you have paid for a VPN or private proxy that you have to use it. Both services have on and off switches (literally, in the case of most VPNs).

To use private proxies you typically enter them into your browser settings, computer network settings, or a third-party application like ScrapeBox. You can disable the use of the proxies at any time — just remember that once you do, your browsing will be from your own ISP IP.

VPNs are typically bundled together with software. You download the software, sign up with your login information, and run the VPN service from that application. There is usually a large “on/off” switch in the VPN, and then many more specific settings for how and when you want the service to run.

The most basic version of utilizing both VPNs and private proxies is to switch them on and off when you’re doing different functions.

This may sound silly in a way, but it’s really not. One of the issues with VPNs is that it can seriously slow down your speed. The amount of time it takes to encrypt your information, send it to a separate service, send it out to the internet, encrypt that information, and proceed to move the information back to you is not an immediate journey.

This slow down is unacceptable for some users, especially at peak hour times when lots of customers are using the VPN’s servers.

For example, you’d probably want to turn off your VPN service when you are running ScrapeBox. There’s no need for ScrapeBox to have each of your proxies pushed through a VPN service as well. The proxies themselves are anonymous enough for ScrapeBox actions, and a VPN will just slow you down.

On the flip side, say you’re downloading a torrent for KickAss Torrents. Typically you have your browser set up to use a proxy. But, because you don’t want the torrent file associated with you (even though it alone isn’t damaging), you can turn on your VPN and turn off your proxy. This will make sure that data is still untraceable, and this time encrypted, so there will never be a record of you having downloaded it.

Being Selective

Each platform suits a different kind of purpose.

If you’re torrenting, make sure your VPN is turned on and rolling before opening uTorrent. This way all your data is encrypted and secure, and you won’t get a copyright notice a few weeks (or months, or years) from now.

If you’re creating tons of email accounts or spamming comments for your new blog (not a practice I recommend in general), do not use your VPN. You’ll want to use private proxies, because you need a separate IP address for many of those creations and comments.

Because a VPN only gives you one IP address, you also don’t want it associated with any of those overused, spammy practices. Sure, you will be protected because the data is encrypted, but the IP address is still one your VPN owns. They will have to continually change your IP address if you get it banned too frequently, and most VPNs don’t want to deal with that.

Running a Private Proxy and VPN Simultaneously

The final option is to turn on both your private proxies and VPN at the same time.

What exactly will this do?

It will increase the overall security of actions online, which is helpful for a lot of people. But it’ll also slow down you connection speed, because of the time it takes to go through both protocols and encryption.

Some VPN services sell proxies with their platform, and in the case it’s easy to use both, and there are instructions or help desks you can reach out to.

If you have proxies that are separate from a VPN, you can still use both.

It’s most common in a scenario where you’re using an application, like ScrapeBox. Turn on your VPN, set up ScrapeBox will all your proxies, and start running. If for some reason a proxy goes bad, isn’t fully anonymous, or is traced back to you in some other way, instead of seeing your actual IP address the VPN’s IP address will show up.

The scenario can change depending on what action you’re performing, but it always adds that extra layer of security.

If you’re really concerned about privacy and the mechanics of linking proxies and VPNs together, look into creating a ProxyChain, which will allow you to structure the routes that these packets of data go through.

Need Both?

It’s a good question, and one that only you can determine.

I’d say that for most users, no, you don’t need both. But if you do need both, you might as well run both at the same time for increased protection, as long as it’s not streaming video or something that requires a quick connection.

This all comes back to whether or not you can afford them. If you can, go for it.

The post How to Use Private Proxies and a VPN Simultaneously appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

So you’re a proxy person. You enjoy entering IP addresses, scouring the internet for batches of free proxies, downloading content and accessing the internet under the guise of anonymity.

I get it. I’m a proxy person too. It’s kind of a rush in the beginning — seeing your ISP address hidden, remaining concealed to the eyes of the world wide web.

After that initial excitement wares off, and your experience with proxies grows exponentially, you’ll notice a few things.

While proxies are fun, they are a tool with a specific purpose. Whatever your purpose is, proxies are used much like a work horse, rather than a pet pony. You need them to work for you, whatever your situation may be.

You’ll also notice after some time that there are some major holes when using proxies. For instance:

• Free proxies are slow, riddled with malware, and burn out quickly.
• Not all private proxies are truly anonymous, so you have to do some routine checking to find out if they are.
• Shared proxies can also burn out, and yet you have to pay for them.
• Not all applications support proxy use.

While the first three of these are problems addressed in other articles, the last one can be remedied fairly easily with a handy application called Proxifier.

What is Proxifier?

If you head to Proxifier’s website, you’ll see that it describes itself in a sentence:

“Proxifier allows network applications that do not support working through proxy servers to operate through a SOCKS or HTTPS proxy and chains.”

To break this down into plain English, you first have to understand that some programs, applications, or Internet browsers don’t allow you to access the Internet through a proxy connection.

Don’t get me wrong, many do. Chrome, Firefox, torrenting applications, and a whole host of other programs have a place to enter proxies in their settings.

However, there are also a number of applications that don’t. This can be immensely frustrating for a proxy user who wants to route a specific program’s internet access through a specific proxy.

In Windows and Mac OS you can head to network settings and adjust proxy usage, but this will route your whole computer through a proxy, which often is too blunt for most users.

Proxifier is a proxy client that makes mincemeat of these frustrations.

In essence you’ll be able to upload any and all of your proxies into Proxifier, assign each and every proxy to a specific application running on your computer and check the logs as the applications run.

For the discerning proxy user Proxifier is a powerful tool.

Below I’ll get into the specifics of all the advantages of using Proxifier with your proxies, be they HTTP, SOCKS, private or free.

Proxifier Advantages

Proxifier is a secondary proxy client that manages the use of your proxies for you, which allows you to get very specific about why and how you want your proxies used.

This, of course, has many advantages.

Check Proxy Connection

This is a basic function, and one that many services perform, but it’s certainly nice to have in Proxifier.

The first thing you have to do to get Proxifier to work is load in all the proxies you want to use. Depending on your situation, this could be a huge number, one that is typically copied from a list.

Before Proxifier will start using these proxies to open applications, it will first check the proxy connection. By clicking the “Start Testing” button you’ll get an almost immediate verification that the proxies you’re using work.

This helps to route out bad free proxies, if you’re going that route, or explain why private proxies might not be working.

HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS 4/5 Functionality with Authentication

If you’re a heavy proxy user you know the difference between HTTP and SOCKS proxies.

For those who don’t — HTTP proxies work when browsing the internet through a typical browser to a specific URL. Thus the “http://” nature of websites, for which this type of proxy was named. SOCKS proxies function on a different protocol, and can be used for any kind of internet connection.

Often these two types of proxies have to be used exclusively and separately by programs.
When you add a proxy to be used in Proxifier, you can easily select which type of proxy it is, with HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS 4, or SOCKS 5 as options.

You’ll want to make sure you know what kind of proxies you are using, because it will matter when entering it. Most proxies are HTTP proxies, but you can usually contact your provider to find out. Free proxies are almost always HTTP proxies.

You’ll also have the option to enter authentication information for any of these proxies. It’s just another section of the proxy addition aspect of Proxifier, and allows you to use proxies that are password protected. Of course, you’ll need the passwords, but that goes without saying.

Assign Proxies to Individual Applications and IPs with Rules

This is where Proxifier really shines.

As I mentioned above, you can alter proxy settings for your computer network, but it typically only allows you to use a single proxy for all your network connections.

Many applications in the proxy world, like ScrapeBox or GSA SER, allow you to upload endless proxies and use them within the application itself.

Likewise, you can assign a proxy to be used with an individual browser, but adjusting different browsers to different proxies can be complicated.

All of this is boiled down to a simple, comprehensive programmability in Proxifier.

When you enter your proxy, whatever kind it is, Proxifier will automatically pop up with a box that makes this particular proxy “used by default.”

If you have just one proxy and want to use Proxifier with only that proxy, click OK and start to use the internet.

However, for most people interested in Proxifier, you’ll be adding more than one proxy.

The way to organize the use of each of these proxies is through Rules.

Proxifier Rules

These rules are literal scenarios in which you can specify when and how a proxy is used. This can be tweaked in a huge number of ways.

The most common ways to use rules is to assign a specific application, target host IP or address and port numbers to be used in a certain action.

For example, you can set rules so that each internet-based application you run uses a different proxy. Likewise, you can set it so that when accessing a website a certain proxy is used.

These rules allow you to do a lot more than those simple scenarios — the options are a bit overwhelming in their complexity, but it’s laid out in a straightforward window and there is ample documentation for how to process complex rules.

The rules allow you a very high level of customization for your proxy usage while also automating the process so that, once you set the rules up for your scenario, you won’t have to worry about which proxies are being used for what process.

Make Proxy Chains

The Proxifier scenario gets even more customized when you begin to use proxy chains.

This is when multiple proxies you own are entered into the system and, with a given set of rules and actions, those proxies are used together in a chain.

You might want this if you’re looking for true anonymity. You can set it so that Proxifier first pings the web with one proxy, then routes through another, then another, and another, until finally reaching the host.

This will likely reduce the overall speed of your process (the more so the more proxies you chain together), but it makes the tracing of your original IP incredibly difficult.

I’m guessing you can think of your own reasons for needing such an anonymous chain.

Ordering the Chains

In the same box that you add individual proxies you’ll be able to add proxy chains. You simply create a chain, then drag and drop proxies to match how you want Proxifier to use them. The top proxy will be used first, the last proxy used last.

Each of the proxies will automatically appear based on the proxies you’ve already entered, and you can create as many chains as you want.

Use Profiles for Multiple Scenarios

Everything I’ve described above can be conducted under a single Profile in Proxifier. This means that your uploaded proxies, your rules, your chains, and how you structure all of it is saved to a single Profile.

You can have multiple Profiles.

This is great for those who love to tinker, or those who have a ton of proxies and use them for very different things. Simply switch between Profiles you’ve already set up based on your current functionality.

Or, better yet, if you’re a business that uses proxies and have multiple people using Proxifier, this allows those people to have their own Profiles, much like individual user settings on an OS.

A Straightforward User Interface

If there’s one thing people tend to agree on in the proxy world, it’s a lack of clear and straightforward explanation. Whether that’s in articles written with bad English, forum threads without enough context or clarity, or programs that aren’t intuitive, there’s a problem in this industry when it comes to crystal clear information.

Just like this article is meant to be very clear, Proxifier was built for people who want a complex tool that can be accessed simply.

There are dedicated versions for Windows and Mac, which means two programs with different skins and menus that match their corresponding OS. This goes a long way in immediate user functionality, making Proxifier “make sense” initially.

Beyond that you have a clear way to add new proxies, a clear way to set up rules, and a clear way to manage and use profiles. Each of the processes is explored above, but you should know that the actual navigation to and for each of those is also simple.

I will note that when getting into the specifics of the rules you’ll be tested with tech-jargon. There are very specific ways your target, host, ports, and IP addresses need to be formatted so that the rules work, so this will require some tweaking.

Real Time Usage

Perhaps the most valuable result of all the hard work you put into setting up Proxifier is the real time usage window that gets enabled when you’re actually running the application.

Once everything is in place you can start to run browsers and applications that access the internet. The moment this happens you’ll see the main screen of Proxifier, a generally empty white box, start to light up with action.

This is the Connections tab, and it shows you an easy-to-read layout of everything that’s connecting to the internet through Proxifier on your computer. It’s broken down into Program Name, Target, Time/Status and Rule: Proxy. Each of these will help you to see what specific thing is being run through Proxifier at any given time.

Below that you’ll see the Output window, which has a constantly updating stream of data that logs messages in real time. Use this to track what is happening.

It’s the combination of these two windows (and a Traffic tab, which is also handy) that makes Proxifier incredibly transparent. You can see everything you’ve created so far in action, and make any adjustments as necessary.

Portable

The last advantageous aspect of Proxifier is actually a huge one. You can download a portable version of the program, which means it can exist on any thumb drive. This makes it so you can take and use Proxifier at work, school, or just about anywhere.

If you’ve got your proxy info on you, this will allow you to access whatever sites you want from anywhere, tunneling straight through firewalls and other preventative settings.

Proxifiy It Up

The advantages to using Proxifiy are numerous. It’s one of the best proxy platforms out there and will allow you to tackle multiple tasks with finesse and ease.

That said, it does cost some money, but it’s not much. A single edition of the program is $39.95, but you’ll have to pay separately for the Mac version, the Windows version, and the portable version. If you browse around you can find a deal on this price, or possibly an authentication key.

It’s a good service though, so try not to take advantage.

The post Advantages of Using Proxies with Proxifier appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

The wonderful world of proxies is centered around one key concept: anonymity. People get proxies to be anonymous online. It’s a bit like wearing the Guy Fawkes mask every time you boot up your computer.

Whether you’re an average joe who is slightly wary of an overzealous National Security Agency, an entertainment-should-be-free capitalism eschewing individual that loves to torrent every last piece of media out there, or a full on black hat technician who sets up TOR, proxies are there for you.

More than ever before, actually. Proxies and VPNs (a service like proxies but with a tweak) are on the rise. This is due to the lack of clarity that governs the inner workings of the web, and how easy it is to get your identity stolen.

It can be as simple as not wanting hackers to find your IP address, and therefore tap into your computer. The solution for that and everything beyond? Get and use a proxy.

The Proxy Irony

Within the seeming web of safety that proxies allow lie a couple not so well known ironies that, from my perspective, are pretty hilarious.

The first is that a lot of proxies aren’t actually anonymous.

Shocked? Don’t be.

Most proxies are free, and free proxies are far from anonymous or safe. Yes, if you can get a free proxy to work in your favor it will hide your IP address for certain activities, and specifically from sites like Google.

However, if you boot up a free proxy into your browser, visit websites, and at some point enter any password and username combination, you’re open to risk.

While your destination website might not see your IP address, the person or company who owns that free public proxy can, and has intimate access to your computer, what your browser displays, and a host of other information.

One way to combat this is to always use private proxies. These come at a price, but that price is often small, and will provide a more thorough peace of mind when it comes to anonymity and security than free proxies.

Below I’ll get into two methods of increasing security for private proxies — username and password combinations, or IP authentication — and which is better.

First, though, know that the second proxy irony is that even private proxies are subject to crises of true anonymity.

If a hacker or government agency is dedicated enough it can retrieve the information you’ve accessed even when you’re on a proxy, and even if that proxy is private. This is because proxies by nature are not as secure as VPN, whose technology creates an impenetrable tunnel between users so that you actually cannot access the information.

Unless you’re a serious hacker yourself, you probably don’t need to worry about this. And if you are a serious hacker, you should already know this.

If we can assume that you don’t fall into that category, a private proxy should be more than enough to keep you actually anonymous.
That said, you’ll need to be sure the proxy provider gives you at least one option for secure authentication.

Types of Proxy Authentication

One of the keys to making sure your private proxies are legitimately anonymous is if they come with authentication.

This should be stated very clearly on your proxy provider’s website. If it’s not, send an email to ask what kind of authentication they use. Both types — username and password, or IP — are valid, but they have their pros and cons.

Username and Password Authentication

This is the more common of the two main types, and the one you’ll be most familiar with. Similar to creating a bank account, joining an email marketing service, or creating any new social media account, username and password authentication is the standard by which we protect ourselves in today’s society.

In the case of proxies that is equally true. When you buy a single (or more likely, a bulk batch) of private proxies, you want to make sure they are used only by you. After all, a private proxy is still just a proxy, which is basically an open port that anyone can connect to.
What makes your proxies safe is that to connect to that port, you have to have the username and password, thereby authenticating your access.

Typically, upon purchase, your provider will send you an email with a list of IP addresses, a username, and a password. In most cases, it will look like this:

111.222.3.444:80:55555name:xyz123

For those not embroiled in the proxy world, that can come out a bit confusing. Of course I’ve used a number and numeral combination that is very fake, but it should correspond roughly to what your provider has given you.

Below I’ll break each section down. Note that colons separate each section (not periods), so you can always go by where the colon is in a line like the one above.

• 222.3.444
  — This is the IP address of your proxy. When anything asks for a specific IP address, use this number.
• 80
  — This is the port number. 80 is a common port number. Other common port numbers are 8080, 3127 and 3128.
• 55555name
  — This is your username, and can really be anything. I based this particular structure off my most recent batch of proxies, which were given to me with a username and password combination. Often your provider will put numbers in here that correspond to your user number, and the name you registered the proxies with.
• xyz123
  — This is your password.

The IP numbers will be different for every proxy you buy, but the ports, username, and passwords are often the same. This is typically to simplify the signing up process.

Your provider should allow you to change your password. This is a pretty important aspect, as you may want to have different passwords for different IP addresses, and you may need to change passwords frequently.

You won’t likely be able to change your username, but your IPs and ports can usually be switched out upon request, depending on what you’re using your proxies for.

How to Log in With Username and Password

Just like the banks and social media accounts I mentioned earlier, logging in with this information is really easy. It’s done in two ways.

Proxy Provider Web Interface

The first way to access and alter any of these settings is to actually log into your proxy provider account. This may be the same username and password as your proxies, but it may be different.

Make sure you check to see which is which, but if they’re the same it will be simple.

Most proxy providers have a web-based user interface you can log into, and in that interface you can see all the proxies you’ve paid for, what their status is, what your subscription plan is like, etc.

This is where you should be able to change your password and make any special requests. In some cases you can assign specific functions to your proxies in this panel, but most often it’s just a portal for you to see what you have registered with your provider.

Specific Proxy Settings

There are many types of specific proxy settings. You can access them in your computer system preferences, in web browsers, in third-party software applications. Almost anything that you plan to use a proxy for will have a space for you to enter that proxy.

In every case you’ll be asked for all of the above information — an IP address, a port number, a username, and a password.

Fill in each of these correctly, and your computer or browser will start using that proxy to connect to the web.

Anonymity at its finest.

IP Authentication

This version of proxy authentication is less common and quite different.

To use proxies in your home you’ll need to have internet access, and when you get internet you will be assigned an IP address by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). This is the IP address you’re trying to hide.

Proxy providers that don’t use username and password authentication (for reasons I’ll get into below) will actually use your ISP IP address to authenticate your proxies.

This means that instead of an email that contains a password that you can change, and a username, you will be automatically verified to use your proxies by your IP address.

You can usually whitelist 1-15 IP addresses with your provider, which means any time you try to use your proxies with any of those IP addresses, it will work automatically.

This process seems simple, and it can be, but it also has a number of pros and cons, which I’ll get into below.

Which Is Better?

This is the big question you’ve been waiting and reading for. As in all things, there is no clear cut answer. Sorry to disappoint.

Each method of authentication has its merits and downfalls, so if you’re trying to make a decision, read below to see which scenario is best for you.

The Pros and Cons of Username and Password Proxy Authentication

I laid out the way username and password authentication works so specifically above because it is imperative to understanding the pros and cons of the system.

The best part of this system is the familiarity. We’re used to having passwords and usernames, as its the most common system around. This will make those who are new to proxies adapt more quickly.

The con of that follows quickly behind — it can be another batch of information to remember, write down, and use. Some people don’t want another password they have to keep track of. What type of person are you?

Another pro is that you’ll have more control and flexibility over your proxy access. You can change the password easily — for those who are worried about their passwords getting hacked, this is a way to fend off such attacks.

The con of this is that you have to potentially change your password often. In some ways IP authentication is more secure because your proxies aren’t subject to a password being cracked.

The final major pro is that you can access your proxies from anywhere. As you’ll see below, the IP authentication method limits you (potentially), while the username and password authentication method makes it so you can log into your proxies, and use them, from any location.

The Pros and Cons of IP Authentication

Since IP authentication is the more unique of the two methods, you’ll find it has more varied pros and cons.

The major pro is that you’ll never have to log in any information for your proxies. This can save you a lot of time if you have, say, a batch of 20 proxies and would normally have to enter different passwords for them. IP authentication takes all of this away — your proxies are automatically authenticated when your provider sees you’re using the designated IP.

Right on its heels, the major con of IP authentication is that it can be very limiting if you travel a lot, or access the internet from different places. Even if you have the full 15 IP addresses whitelisted, working from a coffee shop becomes hard to do with your proxies, because you likely haven’t whitelisted that IP.

One way to combat this is to use a VPN or VPS service. VPNs are a lot like proxies, but different in a number of key ways. However, you can use a VPN to always have the same IP address no matter where you are — you simply log into your VPN, and your IP address will be the one they assign you.

If you whitelist this IP, and always have your VPN on, not only can you use IP authentication proxies from any location but you’ll have a double layer of protection due to your VPN. This is a great system for those who want true anonymity.

The last con to the IP authentication method has to do with dynamic IPs. Some ISPs will give you a static IP address — one that never changes. This will work well for IP authentication because your ISP IP address (typically in your home or office) is always the same.

However, a dynamic IP address is one that changes frequently, without warning. ISPs do this to increase your security, because a constantly changing IP address is much harder to hack. It also means that you’ll have to constantly authorize new IP addresses for your proxy provider.

This is highly situational, so find out if you have a static or dynamic IP address from your ISP.

Do Your Research, Then Get the Best Deal

Now that the two types of proxy authentication are demystified, you have some research to do. What kind of IP does your ISP provide and what system sounds right for you? After those two questions are answered it’s time to start shopping providers.

For the most part there won’t be a cost difference in these methods — but some providers don’t have IP authentication, while others only have that option. Go with the best deal you can find from a reputable proxy provider and you’ll be ready to use proxies in no time.

The post Username and Password or IP Authentication: Which is Better? appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

Some musicians are natural-born marketers, but most of the time they’re not. The musicians I know tend to work odd jobs, play gigs on weeknights, jam in every moment they can, and try to scrape up enough cash to put together a decent sounding record.

With all the creativity and time it takes to write excellent music, it make sense that musicians aren’t by nature marketers, whether it’s in a traditional context or a social media one. That said, most musicians have to figure out how to sell their wares. This happens at shows, on social media, and through word of mouth.

In today’s music landscape there’s one major platform for musicians who are relatively unknown: SoundCloud.

SoundCloud lets musicians upload up to three hours of their tracks for free, and users can listen to any of those tracks for free. There are paid versions for both spectrums of SoundCloud, giving musicians and listeners more options and statistics, but for the most part, people use the free service.

You probably know this, because you’ve come to this article, but SoundCloud is incredibly popular. It stands as one of the most tangible ways to track underground music, and there’s a huge user base (175 million strong) that helps musicians sell out concerts and start to make some real money.

That’s all well and good. A musician can create an account, upload their music, and hope they sound stellar enough to get noticed.

However, the likelihood of that happening all on its own is pretty slim. Just like marketing yourself on the road and online, a musician should plan to market themselves on SoundCloud if they want to get popular.

How to Market on SoundCloud

The way to do this similar to other social media platforms. On SoundCloud there are five main ways to network with other musicians and listeners.

1. Following the User

Sound familiar? Apparently we’re a follow-based world these days, and SoundCloud is no different. Following an artist will keep you updated via a feed, but it will also appear as a metric for their account.

When you follow someone, you increase your likelihood of being found and followed. Basic.

2. Like Their Track

This is also pretty obvious. As a musician you upload a bunch of tracks, and all of those tracks can be “liked”. This shows up as a metric and helps to rank your song in SoundCloud browsing.
When you like another artist’s track you’re giving them digital props, and it will alert them to your presence. The goal is a “like for like.” Unless you’re already popular, you have to be the one to initiate.

3. Repost Their Track

Creating an account on SoundCloud automatically gives you a Profile. That profile functions a bit like a Twitter handle. Sure, you have your own music that people can listen to, but you’re also supposed to be engaged in the community, which means finding and liking other musicians.

Often times users follow musicians because they like their music, but also because those musicians turn them on to even more music.

One of the most clear cut ways to do this is through reposting a track. If you’re a musician and have a friend who just uploaded a great new album, you can repost one of the tracks from that album. This will make it appear on your profile and “feed”, basically amplifying the music to your followers.

This, again, is a way of showing that you care. Repost a track and hope that they will do the same for you.

4. Commenting on the Track

This feature has always been a standout because of the visual way SoundCloud incorporates comments on tracks. You can comment in real-time while listening to the track, and comments appear below the track in a pop-out method.

Just like everything above, commenting alerts the original musician to who you are. An added benefit of commenting is that others can see your comment, and might be curious as to who you are.

If you leave a particularly awesome comment that, perhaps, explores the deep connectivity of space and time in that moment of sonic bliss, you might get some more curious listeners popping over to your account.

5. Send a Direct Message

The last and final way to reach out to people on SoundCloud is through a direct message. This is similar to most other social media’s messaging platforms.

You can look at this in two ways:

Send a message to an artist you like. Tell them why you love them, how they inspire you, and why you think they’ll love your music. This is a way to give props while also directly seeking out new listeners.

Send a message to users. There are a ton of SoundCloud users that don’t upload any music — they’re just there to listen. You can send Direct Messages to these people as well. If you do, you’ll want to be very nice and personable. Mention how you found them, why you think you’ll fit into their listening tastes, and maybe give them a code to download one of your songs for free.

This is the most personal form of communication, but it’s also private, so the community won’t see these or learn more about you.

How to Boost Your SoundCloud Plays with Proxies

There are many metrics that go into an artist being featured on SoundCloud, but in general the concept of “more is better” is applicable here. You want more of everything: followers, reposts, likes, and especially plays.

I’ve gone into such depth above because each of those five components will be key to boosting your SoundCloud plays.

You can break down the ways to court more plays, followers, reposts, and likes into two distinct categories, both of which are greatly helped by the use of the proxies and some SoundCloud specific software.

The first way is more legitimate and will really turn the musician into a marketer, even with the use of proxies. The second way is frowned upon, but very effective.

I’ll discuss the legitimate way first, and then detail the less-legitimate one.

Boosting SoundCloud Plays Legitimately with Proxies

“Legitimate” in this context is a relative term, because the moment you begin to use proxies for anything other than anonymity, you’re talking about automation. That means automation will be used to get song likes, followers, and plays, which, in general, is not really encouraged by SoundCloud, just like Twitter doesn’t allow automation of posts and favorites.

Automation as a method is not allowed but frequently used by people all over the world. As such, it’s legitimate in a sense, and the specific way I’ll be describing below is fine as long as you use it in moderation.

Automation with SoundCloud will typically involve a software program. There are tons of programs out there, typically called bots, but the top contender is SoundCloudManager. It will cost you a one-time fee of around $97, but you can look for deals. You can probably get a cheaper bot, or have a programmer build you one, but I’ll be basing most of this article on SoundCloudManager because it’s comprehensive and easy to use.

While you can perform the five methods of social interaction listed above on your own, automating them saves a lot of time. Instead of spending Wednesday night networking until 1AM, you can write music until 1AM, upload that music on Thursday to SoundCloud, and keep two veritable trains rolling at one time.

The automation of follows, likes, comments, reposts and direct messages can all be handled by SoundCloudManager. You’ll just have to get the software (or something like it), log into your SoundCloud account, and begin to explore the possibilities.

Using Proxies for SoundCloud

When you start using automation there are a couple key concepts to understand. The first is that you need to use proxies.

Proxies are necessary because if you perform a large number of regulated actions from a single IP address, SoundCloud will catch onto you, and your ISP will get upset at the frequency of use. You want to stay well out of both of those radars, and to do that you’ll want to upload either free or private proxies directly into the SoundCloud bot, and then run your actions through those proxies.

Free proxies will work, but are better for a method I’ll describe below. For your routine daily follows, comments, etc., you’ll want a dedicated batch of 10 or so private proxies. These will run without fail, making sure your networking happens night and day while keeping your actual ISP out of the picture.

Regulating Frequency

The second key concept to understand about these programs is that after uploading proxies and figuring out what actions you will take, you need to regulate the frequency.

I can’t say this enough — regulate the frequency!

The best way to get caught robbing banks is to rob the same bank every thirty minutes on the dot until the police are waiting with guns and handcuffs.

When it comes to automated networking, you want to make sure you set your program to perform actions on a somewhat human scale. Don’t follow a thousand people in a minute. Don’t direct message a new person every 3 seconds. Don’t make your actions look incredibly obvious and suspicious, because somebody will notice.
As long as you regulate the frequency of your use, automated social networking will continue to work for you.

Doing all of this will increase your overall plays. By building a broader community you will intrinsically see your play count go up, and once the ball starts rolling it’s hard to stop, because SoundCloud will start to feature you, and then you’ll have more organic plays than ever.

Boosting SoundCloud In Less Legitimate Ways

If you’re looking to give yourself a major boost and don’t care if you’re cheating the system, this section is for you.

I’ll tell you right now that while these methods do work, it’s a bit unfair to all those hardworking musicians who put in the normal hours and time to become recognized on SoundCloud. That said, people do this all the time, with SoundCloud and a host of other networks. It’s the way of the world — if you’re of that mindset, you won’t think twice.

Auto Play

Bots like SoundCloudManager often have the ability to “play” your song as many times as you want. Proxies are even more necessary for this, as the program will be playing your song as if a real person, with a different IP address in a different location, is the one who’s listening.

As I said above, make sure you have a handle on how often to run this program. You don’t need or want 200,000 plays in under a week. That’s not realistic or helpful. See how many plays popular SoundCloud musicians have, and set the program to hit that number in a month.

You’ll want to do this slowly with a batch of private proxies, but this is also a good place to use free proxies. Grab a free list, test them in the program, and then use a combination of the proxies to make rake up the song plays. You want more individual IP addresses than normal, because if SoundCloud traces this activity back to you, it can remove a song or ban your account.

Artificial Users

For those who really want to work the system, SoundCloud Manager has the ability to mass create fake accounts on SoundCloud, which you can then program to like, follow, comment, and repost your tracks.

This is exactly what it sounds like — a dirty trick to inflate numbers. All of those numbers will be fake, but you’ll watch as your songs and profile grows in leaps and bounds.

It’s even more important to do this slowly and cautiously, as this is a very serious violation of SoundCloud’s terms and conditions.

That said, if you set everything up so that it’s not traceable, you can become a trending artist in a couple months and start to receive plenty of plays organically. Unless your music sucks. It will be harder in that case.

Set a Goal

The reason you’re probably using proxies, a software program, and some shady tactics to up your SoundCloud account is because you’re ambitious. You know that even if you’re insanely talented it’s hard to get noticed in today’s saturated world.

Just like you might pay a marketing firm to help manage your music, setting up a program to run some of these tasks is, to me, perfectly legitimate.

However, you should start the process with a clear goal in mind. Write down how many followers you want, how many song plays, how much activity in general. Approach that goal slowly and cautiously so you don’t get caught, and once you hit the goal consider slowing way down or stopping altogether.

The point of this is to get noticed, and once you’ve done that you’ll have to let your music speak for itself.

The post How to Use Proxies to Boost Your SoundCloud Plays appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

You like the dark corners of the internet, don’t you? The crawl spaces meant for those with late-night coding addictions, stacks of cash and silver bars hidden around the house, and accounts that aren’t remotely close to any nationally certified bank.

I get it. This world, in many ways, is roasting in a slow fire, and the crypto life is one of the more promising ways to survive and thrive in the potentially doomsday future.

You could also just be an economics major trying to make it big with the first successful global cryptocurrency to circle earth.

Whatever your motivation for using bitcoin, you’re going to want more of it. It’s money, and all of us are into money in order to have more of it.

What is Bitcoin?

In general I’m writing under the assumption that you have a clear idea of bitcoin, but for those that don’t here’s a very brief primer.

Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto and is the first major implementation of cryptocurrency, a concept that uses cryptography “to control the creation and transfer of money.” This takes those two regulating factors — transfer and creation — out of the government’s or bank’s control, making bitcoin a secure and anonymous world currency.

It is digital and uses peer-to-peer technology for an immediate, completely private transfer. No third party needs to verify a transaction, and no transaction may be reversed.

The final major component to bitcoin is that the amount of it in the world is heavily regulated by CPUs and the community that participates in bitcoin, therefore there is almost no inflation.

This means that, today, it’s very hard to come by bitcoin. This wasn’t true when the currency first debuted, but now that it’s popular it’s hard to get any in the traditional method, which I’ll get into below.

Earning More Bitcoin with Proxies

Due to the very strict amount of bitcoin on the market, you can guess that it’s quite difficult to obtain. Tiny, tiny amounts of bitcoin are within your reach, but giant globs (i.e., a single bitcoin, or even 10) are going to be take some serious time or a full-proof business plan.

A single bitcoin, at the time of writing, is worth $667.30 USD (and probably higher as you’re reading this). Harvesting it could be very worth your while, especially if the currency continues to rise.

Note that you’ll need a bitcoin wallet so that if you do earn bitcoin, it can be deposited somewhere. Coinbase is the “world’s leader” in that field at the moment.

I’ll break up the methods of earning more bitcoin with proxies into three main areas, and illustrate five key ways to make that bitcoin within those methods.

1. Mining Bitcoin

The first and original method of gaining bitcoin is to mine it. “Mine” here is supposed to make you think of donning a protective hat, a pick axe, and getting deep into the earth.

Except instead of the earth and a mine, you’re cracking a code that is auto-generated by computers. If you break this code (basically a puzzle), you are rewarded with bitcoin.

In the early days of bitcoin cracking these codes could conceivably be done by a single person, or small group. Successfully cracking the code also yielded in large, whole sums of bitcoin.

This is no longer the case.

While mining bitcoin is still the only method of getting new bitcoin into the market, it’s been put on an extremely slow release model.

This means two things:

• The codes to break are extremely complicated.
• The amount of bitcoin you get for breaking a code is small.

When I say the bitcoin codes are “extremely complicated” to solve I mean that no human can solve them. No single computer can solve them. No fairly advanced computer can solve them. Not even a high-end, specifically built-for-the purpose computer can solve them alone in a reasonable amount of time.

Mining Groups

Bitcoin is now so difficult to mine that it requires groups of people who have specialized computers all working toward the same puzzle. This will eventually crack the code, but in the meantime you increase your energy bill, have to build or acquire that gear, and generally spend money on internet and proxies.

All of this is to say that while mining is the original form of earning more bitcoin, it’s not cost efficient most of the time.

If for some reason you have the capital to set up a server warehouse of computers working 24/7 to harvest a bitcoin code all by yourself, it could result in money somewhere down the road, if bitcoin increases in value.

It’s a long-term plan, one that won’t result in a lot more bitcoin.

Performing Tasks for Bitcoin

The second major way to earn more bitcoin is to do tasks for them. Sounds like work, right? Well, your goal is money in the form of bitcoin, so working for that bitcoin makes sense on the capitalism ideology front.

This is markedly different from mining because it’s not about getting more bitcoin in the market — it’s about earning bitcoin that’s already out there.

Basically, companies have bitcoin and are willing to sell tiny, tiny fractions of it to you for performing certain tasks.

These tasks aren’t quite like getting your boss’ groceries or taking the pet to the vet.

1. Mundane Tasks

If you search “bitcoin tasks” in Google you’ll find a number of sites that offer bitcoin in very small amounts for a handful of tasks. Cointasker.com is one such site.

You can earn bitcoin for watching videos, completing surveys, downloading apps, playing games, interacting on social media, shopping online and commenting in different communities.

This is basically a value of your time for bitcoin. You can earn USD or any other regulated currency in these ways too, but in this case you’ll get paid with bitcoin.

CoinTasker.com, at the time of writing, has over 36,000 members who’ve completed over a million tasks, all of which have totaled in 12.45-etc. bitcoin.

Yes, over 12 bitcoin for over a million microtasks.

While this doesn’t seem like a very good rate, you have to remember that this article is also about proxies.

Proxies, when bought and employed correctly, can watch videos for you, can comment for you, can download things for you. This gets more complicated and potentially eats into your earnings, but if you want bitcoins by doing mundane tasks your best bet is to find tasks that proxies can perform while you’re at work, getting traditional money to pay for those proxies.

Note that you’ll need to register an account with any of these task services.

2. Use a Bitcoin Faucet

This is similar to the mundane tasks, but a bit more specific. “Faucets” in the bitcoin world are websites that offer a select amount (or predetermined range) of bitcoins to be given away during a certain time period.

Potential winners must perform specific tasks within that time frame in order to get the bitcoin. These typically offer more bitcoin than the websites that allow to you to do tasks any time, because there is a limited factor involved.

You still won’t receive a ton of bitcoin for performing tasks during a faucet, but if you’re on it you can continually reap the rewards.

Again, use proxies to do these tasks when possible. You can’t set them on 24/7 auto-pilot because faucets occur at unique times, so this will take more effort on your end. Note that some faucets will ban you for using automated processes — it’s a tricky world, one you’ll have to navigate.

Lastly, many of these faucets requires that you have an empty balance of bitcoin in order to win. This is supposed to prevent squatters from raking in all the bitcoin when others are trying to get a chance. This means that most people who faucet will reap the rewards, send their bitcoin to another account to achieve a zero balance, and then wait for the next faucet.

If you want to go the faucet route, Google “bitcoin faucets“. One of the issues with the bitcoin world is that sites like this don’t last for very long, so putting them in an article is not very effective. Do your research and find a faucet that suits you well.

Charge Bitcoin

The beauty of bitcoin in 2016 is that it’s becoming more accepted in the mainstream. This means that you can conceivably charge people bitcoin instead of (or alongside) credit cards, cash, etc.

The sky’s technically the limit when it comes to this — charge bitcoin if you’re teaching yoga, selling tacos, training triathletes, etc. If you have the power to ask for money in a certain form, you are able to charge in bitcoin.

However, that isn’t going to work out most of the time, because a lot more people use credit cards and cash than bitcoin. Selling a taco for .003 bitcoin won’t go over great in the food truck line.

The best way to charge for bitcoin (and actually get it) is to sell services that bitcoin users are likely to use.

Selling Proxies for Bitcoin

Proxy and bitcoin users tend to walk similar paths. Many bitcoin earners have to use proxies to make any reasonable amount of returns, and those concerned with the traceability of their money are also concerned with the anonymity of their browsing.

This lines up perfectly for you, a potential proxy seller. If you’re a business person but not a tech person, you can hire someone to help you set up and run a private proxy service.

If you’re both, do it all yourself. The second you start selling proxies you’ll want to post about it on Black Hat World — get your product out there.

Just make sure you accept bitcoin as payment. It wouldn’t be wise to only accept bitcoin, but if you’re really keen on making bitcoin you could make that your sales pitch: “Buy private proxies for bitcoin only!”

Develop a tool

This takes more work and requires you to have a great idea, but if you develop a tool like ScrapeBox you can charge bitcoin for it.

The people using such a tool (a scraper in this example) are more likely to have bitcoin, which means you’ll be right in your target audience.

Developing a useful tool that warrants payment is not easy, so this will require a good amount of thought and strategy on your part.

The reality is that charging bitcoin will mean you have something of value to offer. You’ll see many small businesses that accept bitcoin today via their POS system or some other easy method. People don’t often pay in bitcoin, but when they do you make some for your collection.

As the popularity of bitcoin continues to rise you’ll see more major sites accepting bitcoin. You can always do the same. There are a ton of services that allow you to create platforms for accepting bitcoins.

Make That Bitcoin

Bitcoin is fascinating. The world’s first crypto-currency and a peer-to-peer system of exchange that is untraceable. It has the potential dominate the global market, but only if people are dedicated to it.

If you’re interested in bitcoin, it’s best to start making it yesterday. So start now.

The post 5 Ways to Earn More Bitcoin With Proxies appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

The automation of social networking is a subject with many connotations, rules and practices.

Using services like Pinbot to automate Pinterest requires a certain mentality, one I can assume you have because you’re here, reading this article.

The basic gist: If you’re going to automate your social networking on Pinterest (or any other social network) you’ll need to use proxies so that the rule-breaking can’t traced back to you.

Don’t let that scare you, though. Nobody plays by the rules.

How Automation Is Viewed and How it Really Works

In general the networks themselves — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. — are against automation.

This is grounded in a concept that should be familiar to you already: humans use social networks. If you think that robots use social networks, that dogs use it, that aliens use it, you are at an impasse with the companies themselves, who are hell-bent on making sure that individual humans are actually doing all the networking on their platforms.

In the early days of social networks this made a lot of sense. It was a place to connect and share ideas with your friends.

In 2016, however, social media is one of the most profitable and growing forms of marketing on the planet. You grandmother, the one whose friend request you won’t accept, is being marketed to every time she opens a social network app on her iPad. Businesses are marketing to other businesses and celebrities are marketing themselves, just like you and your friends market your lives to each other now.

All of this goes to show that while humans are supposed to be interacting on these social networks, in reality there are corporations with the money-making motivations.

Thus enters the age of social networking automation.

Ford created the factory line to increase productivity for his company. That’s essentially what computers do at a base level. It’s no surprise then that this form of once-happy-and-free interaction is now being automated by corporations and individuals alike in order to increase the productivity of their accounts.

Pinterest, Pinbot and Proxies

Some of you may think Pinterest is a baby social network compared to the others mentioned above. Well, it is compared to Facebook, but so is every other network.

Pinterest has over 100 million active users, and one of the fastest growth trajectories of any social networking site around. What’s more, the users of Pinterest tend to actually buy the things that are being marketed toward them.

A number of studies have showed that Pinterest is used in the majority by women, the majority of whom buy products at a higher rater than other networks.

This alone is a reason to get into Pinterest, and likely a reason you have come to this article.

What is Pinbot

When any social network reaches a critical mass of users the coders crack their fingers and begin to develop automation tools. It’s how this game works.

Pinbot was created in 2013 by Ilya Nevolin, and it’s hardly the first automated Pinterest tool. You can get a bot for your Pinterest on sites like Github, but Pinbot is a full-service suite that goes above and beyond these creations.

Pinbot takes every essential element of Pinterest and gives you the ability to automate all of it. You can tweak almost every aspect of the automation process too, ensuring that you don’t get banned or flagged, upset your user base, or look like a spam account.

The main features of Pinbot (and therefore Pinterest) can be seen below:

1. Scraping and pinning unique images

Pinterest is all about pinning images — thus the name, “pin” what “interests” you.

Pinning is done by creating an account and a board, or multiple boards. Your board typically has a name and a specific theme, and you pin any and all images that fit the theme to that board. The board is searchable by other users, and if people like your collection of images they will begin to follow you, repin, and like you.

As a business, your first and primary strategy should be to create a number of boards that focus on different aspects of your niche and pin images to those boards.

Pinbot automates this process in two ways, both of which save time.

The first is that you can save images to Evernote, your hard-drive, or somewhere else and load them into Pinbot to be pinned later. This means you are still curating the selection of images, but you are automating the pinning process. You can set a week’s worth of pins in a few hours like this — just make sure to follow Pinbot’s instructions for correct tagging and categorization.

Second, you can use the scraping tool in Pinbot to find images for you, and then tell it to pin them to your boards. This is trickier because it hands the image-finding reins over to a robot. Only do this if you plan to master the system Pinbot uses to find (scrape) these images. It will find images based on keywords and use sites like Tumblr to search for good matches.

If you set all of this to automate you’ll want to watch it closely in the beginning, because no scraper is going to be right 100% of the time.

2. Repin niche relevant images

You can pin images to your board, thereby bringing them into the Pinterest community. The next step is to repin someone else’s pinned images. This is basically like a retweet, in that it gives social love to another user, and then shows up on your own board.

This, obviously, is a great way to build community.

You can set this service to automate with Pinbot, but like the last step you’ll want to dial in the specifics of how it does this so it’s not grabbing strange (or disturbing) images and putting them on your board.

Pinbot does have the parameters to make this possible, so get into your tech mindset and learn.

3. Invite users to pin on your boards

Your boards can be set so that only you can post to them, or they can be Group Boards that allow multiple people to post.

As a business you’ll want a number of boards, some which are always for your own posting, but group posting on Pinterest is one of the best ways to encourage customers to interact and influence your brand.

This is a standout feature for Pinbot, because it lets you manage multiple board’s access from its own software platform.

You’ll need to dial in the specific settings for this because you don’t want untested or harmful posters with access to your boards, so I advise to use this feature sparingly, but effectively.

4. Like and Comment on Pins

These are really two different things that have a wide range of impact, especially when automated.

Liking other pins on Pinterest is a great way to seamlessly social network. They will receive a notification of your like, you will potentially gain a follower. Not too much harm done.

Commenting, however, has a much more serious interaction and scope. To comment automatically you’ll need to load in specific comments, which can get tricky. I don’t recommend commenting automatically — actually using words as your brand on other people’s pins can get out of hand fast, especially if your settings aren’t dialed in.

5. Follow and Unfollow

As with most social media networks, you can follow and unfollow users in Pinterest. Both your followers and following are publicly visible on Pinterest, so you’ll want to make sure the “Following” number doesn’t skyrocket past how many followers you have.

That said, dialing in a solid follow automation can be incredibly effective at growing your audience. Often a well-placed follow from a brand gets a follow in return. If you do this 24/7 at timed intervals you will continually gain followers.

With that in mind, Pinbot also allows you to automatically unfollow people, and has the nifty feature of unfollowing people who don’t follow you (even after you’ve followed them). This becomes dishonest if overly used, so tread carefully. However, it’s a great way to clean up your profile after a heavy follow batch.

7. Send Automated Messages to Followers

If you want to keep it very simple, sending an automated message to new followers that says, “Thanks for the follow!” is generally alright.

Some marketers will go beyond this and include a link to their website or business, and while this can be effective you want to be careful. Nobody loves getting a spam link the second they follow someone (some people don’t even want a message), so proceed with caution.

General Advice for Pinbot

The above methods of automation are all great, but, as I said in many of the points, don’t set and forget the program without some solid trial and error research, preferably with a dummy Pinterest account.

The second you automate anything you have the potential to greatly offend customers and devalue your brand (not to mention get an account blocked or deleted). Take note of what works, how it works, and how to get Pinbot doing what you need it to do.

Proxies for Pinbot

The best way to keep out of serious trouble with Pinterest automation (and any social network) is to use proxies. Specifically, private proxies.

The founder of Pinbot recommends using proxies if you have three or more Pinterest accounts, but stresses a proxy per account. Even if you’re using under three accounts, the second you start automating with Pinbot you’ll want to grab some proxies just to clear your actual IP address off any records.

Free proxies can be used, but they’ll fail and you’ll have to reload often.

Your best bet is paid proxies, and you can use shared or totally private. For the best results without hassle, private proxies are always the way to go because you’ll be the only one accessing the port.

The Pinbot founder also says that HTTPS proxies are the best for Pinbot, but HTTP will work as well. SOCKS proxies typically don’t work for this kind of software.

Enter Proxies into Pinbot

Once you have decided on a proxy provider, the uploading process is very simple. When you add a Pinterest account to Pinbot, you’ll have to enter the email address and password associated with that account.

In the same box you’ll see a “Use Proxy” checkbox, and the space to enter your proxy information. So, when creating any account you can easily input your proxy information. This makes it easy to keep a single proxy tied to one Pinterest account, which is what I recommend.

If your proxies have email and password authorization, you can enter that information here. If they are authorized by IP, make sure you are not using a VPN or proxy service when you add the Pinterest account into Pinbot.

The only flaw with this is that the proxies need to be updated manually if one were to get banned or blocked, which might happen depending on your usage.

Automate Away

Pinbot is a robust offering in the automation world, and it’s still not incredibly popular. This means you can use it under the radar on Pinterest, which has more lax security than sites like Twitter or eBay when it comes to automation.

The best part, though, is the stellar customer service. If you’re a total noob in this field, don’t worry. The founder is very active on Black Hat World and ready to help customers navigate the process. He has included a plethora of content to help you make money and utilize the software efficiently via his VIP package, which you’ll get access to when you purchase the software.

Remember not to overwhelm the system with activity, fly under that human-oriented radar, and you’ll have Pinterest automated in no time.

The post Using Pinbot and Private Proxies to Automate Pinterest appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

Which Proxies Work Best for SENnukeX and Xrumer?

If you’re looking to perform some dark web magic, you’ll probably begin with proxies. You don’t want anyone to know the magic was performed by you, right?

In reality, you don’t have to engage in black hat SEO tactics – the tech-y version of warlock-level spells – to render your enemies (competitors) senseless. Using proxies doesn’t imply the use of such tactics, just that you want to be hidden in your actions.

Regardless of the intentions and methods you are using, there are types of proxies that work better than others.

This is especially true when dealing with certain software applications.

The two applications on the chopping block today are SEnuke and Xrumer.

These are where that dark magic comes in. I won’t say outright that everyone who uses SEnuke or Xrumer are black hat technicians – but if I’m honest a lot of them are.

These programs allow you to automate a number of processes on the web to increase your SEO rankings. The main feature of these is to automatically create backlinks to your website through a number of methods, thereby boosting your overall rank in Google and other search engines.

As you can imagine, these practices are either frowned upon by most, or straight up disallowed, depending on what you’re doing and how often you’re doing it.

I’m not here to judge, though. I’m here to tell you how to perform these actions (technically only the legal ones!) in the best way possible, thereby decreasing your time and cost while increasing results.

There are many factors that go into this, but proper use of proxies is one of the most important. I’ll break down which proxies you should use below, but first a bit more on these two programs.

SEnuke

SEnuke has a great name, but I always wondered why they left the “o” off SEO. Quips aside, this is one of the most powerful SEO tools on the market.

It’s actually a bit unfair how powerful it is, because it sure-as-hell isn’t open source. This means those with money have a much more robust platform to use against their competitors.

SEnuke actually has three distinct versions at the time of writing:

1. SEnuke TNG

This is the newest, most comprehensive version released yet. The TNG version has a new skin and array of potent features, like crowd searching, built-in optical character recognition (OCR) and a macro recorder.

It retains all of the old features, too, but throws them into a much more intuitive interface that looks brand new.

2. SEnuke XCr

This is similar to TNG, but has the special “XCr” feature, which is a community-based uploading of broken scripts. You can help the community by uploading your own, and then download quick fixes.

If you have or want XCr, check out Matthew Woodward’s full review.

3. SEnuke X

This is an older version, but still highly used and popular. You can probably download a cracked version of this, though I don’t recommend it, just because I never recommend stealing from companies in print.

The classic version is still super powerful, and has all the classic methods of building backlinks.

Cost

Assuming you’re looking to purchase SEnuke, the TNG Lite version will cost $67 per month, while the Pro version will cost $147 per month. You can have a 7 day free trial for both. You can’t technically pay for XCr or X anymore, but I’m sure if you dig around the web you can find a version.

The monthly cost means you’ll want to justify your use of SEnuke as time goes on, but if you use it correctly I’m sure that won’t be difficult.

Xrumer

If SEnuke is a comprehensive backlink tool, Xrumer is a very powerful, very specific backlink tool.

It specializes in posting comments to forums. We’re talking about the potential to post thousands of comments continually as different users, all with specific set parameters, all of which is automated.

While Xrumer is particularly effective when used correctly, it’s known to have a steep learning curve.

Xrumer only has one official version that is continually updated – it’s currently at version 12.0.16. It’s a one-time purchase, with three different tiers: Lite for $100, Standard for $240 and Business for $400.

Each has slightly different abilities, and each comes with different plugins.

Many people in the SEO backlink game use Xrumer and SEnuke together – but you have to be ready to drop some cash into both programs.

Using Proxies for Backlinks

Both of these programs are meant to help increase your site’s SEO placement, and both do this through a variety of backlink methods. I won’t get into all of these methods, as they are complicated and time-consuming to lay out.

Hopefully, because you’re here, you already have and know how to use the programs.

You’d also then know that creating backlinks for your website in an automatic way can be risky. If you don’t use proxies, it means you’ll be outfitting these programs to run automatic campaigns, and every interaction on the web will carry your actual IP address.

This is dangerous. There are a huge number of reasons to use proxies, which block the visibility of this IP address, but the main one in regards to backlinks is so Google or the sites and forums you’re posting to don’t ban your IP address.

Once your actual IP address gets banned or blocked you are out of luck.

Proxies are your main way out of that mess, and you want to use them for both of these programs.

What Kind of Proxies?

The good kind, obviously.

Once you get either of these programs you’ll see that both have tools for finding and using proxies within them, specifically SEnuke TNG. Programs like this typically come with a public proxy scanner and checker, which allows you to use free proxies in the place of paid ones.

This can work, but it won’t ever work well. Public proxies are free for a reason. While this software allows you to avoid the worst of what public proxies can do to your computer and IP address, it doesn’t change the fact that public proxies fail frequently.

This means you’ll need to update the list you use in either program, thereby greatly limiting the “set and run” feature that is so great about automatic campaigns.

The best proxies, then, are those that you pay for. There are many kinds of those paid proxies, though, so I’ll break down the concept below, starting with the best, ending with the last.

Rotating Proxies

Rotating proxies are going to be your best bet for use with SEnuke and Xrumer.

Why?

Well, using proxies with these programs implies you’ll be using them pretty hard. You want to be able to push the amount of backlinks created to their reasonable limit, and doing so has a chance to burn your proxies, even if they’re private and paid for.

A provider of rotating proxies will give you entirely new proxies, meaning new IP addresses, every couple hours or days. The number of new proxies depends on the provider, of course, but the idea remains the same.

You don’t just ask for new proxies once they’ve become blocked or banned – you get them automatically.

This allows you to run private proxies as hard as possible, meaning you’ll get the most backlinks out of a single campaign, all without pissing off your provider or paying for a larger batch of proxies.

You’ll probably pay a little more for rotating proxies, but it will be worth it. Rotating proxies means faster and harder backlink campaigns, which means more money coming in from your website, because your SEO is higher, which is the whole point.

Elite Private Proxies

If rotating proxies are the cream of the crop, elite private proxies are a close second. “Elite” means the provider does not keep logs and the proxies are truly anonymous (well, as anonymous as any HTTP proxy can be). “Private” means they are solely used by you.

Elite private proxies are the standard paid proxy model, and are used by a number of scrapers, hackers, pirates, and privacy-concerned citizens. Many services offer them, and they aren’t too expensive.

Unlike the rotating proxies, you’ll get a set batch of proxies, typically 10-100. You can request new proxy IPs if they get banned or blocked, but your provider will become upset (or wary of your practices) if you request new proxies frequently.

This means you’ll need to set the parameters of SEnuke and Xrumer to a lower speed. Keep your thread count lower, the number of accounts created and posts and comments lower, and the speed at which everything happens lower.

Overall this means your campaign will take more time to effectively place on you top of the SEO charts, but you’ll still be able to climb fairly quick.

If you do a good job of staying under the radar you can utilize fully automatic campaigns that run 24/7 on both programs with 10 proxies. You won’t have to change a thing, unless you want to refine parameters as the process runs.

Shared Proxies

If you want proxies that will work most of the time, but not pay the full cost of private proxies, consider shared proxies. These are typically still “elite” in that the providers don’t keep logs and they are fairly anonymous, but instead of you being the only user, you’ll share an IP address with some people.

The number of people depends on your provider, so make sure to check in with them.

Due to the shared nature of these proxies, you are going to pay less for them. However, this comes with a couple very obvious negatives:

1. There’s a greater chance of the proxies getting banned or blocked at any time. When you’re sharing proxies with multiple people you never know what they’re doing, but you’re all using the same IP address. Shared proxies fail more frequently. The upside is usually proxy providers are aware of this and more willing to refresh shared proxies.

2. You won’t get the same speed. Shared, again, means the proxy is being used by multiple people, each of which are routing information. SEnuke and Xrumer tend to take a lot of bandwidth to perform at high capacity, so you will see your campaign get bottle-necked if those shared people are using the proxy too.

While I don’t really recommend shared proxies for this service, they are way more effective than public proxies. If you’re experimenting and trying to get a feel for how necessary SEnuke and Xrumer are for your business, start with a batch of shared proxies.

Know that the second you get dedicated private proxies your speeds will go up significantly.

Purchasing Advice

With those types of proxies in mind, there is some purchasing advice that is necessary before I send you off into the proxy world. As a general rule you’ll want to do as much research as you can in these fields.

It’s inherently difficult to find solid information on them because many black hat people don’t like to dish out information, and many people that use proxies don’t speak (or write) in clear English. This even includes the creators of Xrumer.

All of this makes research tough, but I still recommend you to do it.

A couple key things to remember for purchasing proxies:

1. Always contact the provider and ask about these particular programs.

The best thing you can do when shopping around for proxies is to use the “Contact Us” button. Shoot off emails to providers you think might work and ask if their proxies are used for Xrumer and SEnuke, and how well they work.

Ask the customer service department if they can help you navigate those programs if you need help.

Tell them roughly what you want to do, including number of proxies, level of campaign, and how many threads you’d like to use. Start the dialogue with these professionals, because they usually know exactly what you will need.

This way, when your proxies are banned and blocked (they eventually will be), your provider won’t be surprised. In fact, they will probably have proxies ready and waiting for you.

2. Always make sure the proxies provided are virgin or have yet to be banned.

Virgin proxies are the term applied for any proxy that has never been used before. This means that, by nature, Google and other engines or sites have never seen the proxy, which means it can’t have any negative stigma attached.

There are plenty of proxy providers that recycle old IP addresses. When an IP address gets banned or blocked there is a record kept by the organization that banned it. You don’t want to pay for proxies with stigma.

If you get private proxies that fail to work right away, let your provider know.

3. Use HTTP, rather than SOCKS

Typically SOCKS proxies are more secure as they tunnel directly to the host, but in these two programs they cause a lot of errors. HTTP proxies are more common, so this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

With that said, be clear with your provider about anonymity. Are they really anonymous? Do they keep logs? Make sure you know before you begin to use them heavily.

Get Your Campaign Going

Are you ready to deal in black magic?

Proxies are the first step, and these programs are the next. SEnuke has a 7-day free trial, so definitely try that before buying. Xrumer costs what it costs – do your research and make sure you want it before purchasing. That said, it costs a lot less than SEnuke in the long run, due to the one time purchase.

Make sure to load your proxies correctly in each program, and don’t overlap. You’ll want dedicated proxies for each platform, or make sure they aren’t running at the same time.

SEO-land awaits your domination.

The post Which Proxies Work Best for SEnukeX and Xrumer? appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

Pokemon Go is perhaps the most talked-about app (or video game) ever released. That’s debatable and I have no proof, but if social feeds, major news outlets, and estimated downloads are any indicator, the game about catching imaginary creatures is as massive as anything we’ve seen.

This is good news for almost everyone – kids are happy, parents are stoked, millennials are blissed out on nostalgia straight from the tap, and everybody is spending more time outside, getting their daily dose of exercise.

I’ll omit the accidents and deaths that have come from the app, because this isn’t the forum for those things. I’ll also omit the fact that imaginary creatures are still imaginary, and don’t make up for interacting with things like trees and water.

The point is that this thing is popular. Like all extremely popular phenomena, an underworld has cropped up around Pokemon Go.

This underworld involves proxies and even more fake imaginary creatures.

If you’re a fan of Pokemon Go and want some special in-game powers, read below.

But first, a word from your conscience.

Obligatory Disclaimer

However, it’s important to state very clearly that the five methods I outline below are not condoned or allowed by Niantic, the creator of Pokemon Go. That’s because Niantic doesn’t want you meddling with their well-defined rules. It doesn’t want you playing from incorrect locations, creating creatures, fooling the masses, or hacking any other part of the game.

You’ve got to remember that your competition, for the most part, is children. The why of the hacking is up to you, but the fact that you’re hacking is going to be looked down upon by many casual users.

Likewise, if you’re ever found out to be hacking your account will be deleted and your Pokemon will be vaporized. All record of your sort of hard work will no longer exist, and you may have issues creating new accounts, especially if you started your account with your actual Gmail address. That includes permanent bans for cheaters.

The good news is that if you’re already a hacker prone to proxy use and thwarting the “man”, this comes as no surprise.

Carry on.

How to Use Proxies for Pokemon Go Hacking

Alright, yes, the aforementioned cheating will be illuminated below. For the most part proxies are the gateway to each of these techniques, rather than the method in and of itself.

That is often the case with proxies. They eternally live up to their name – not actually being anything other than a mirror of reality.

That’s true for four of the methods below. I’ll get into the first and only technique that uses proxies in their actual essence, rather than as a tool to get something else done.

1. Change Your Geolocation

This aspect of proxies is true for Pokemon Go, just as it’s true for every other kind of proxy hacking process.

Proxies are built to stand in for your IP address. IP addresses are very similar to your physical address in the sense that they’re unique to you and based in the real, physical world.

If you have an internet connection, you have an IP address. This IP is given to you by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and, beyond being a long number, carries geographical data with it.

Go to WhatIsMyIP.com and, unless you’re already running a proxy or VPN, you’ll see your ISP IP and where you are located.

This may seem sketchy to you – if it doesn’t, you’re very new to proxies.

Most people in the proxy world hate the fact that their physical location can be discovered by their IP address.

It’s actually the reason most people get a proxy. At its most basic, a proxy is another IP address, located somewhere else, that masks your actual IP address, and therefore your geolocation.

You can purchase proxies that are located in specific countries so that, when enabled, it appears you’re browsing from that country.

Why Geolocation Matters in Pokemon Go

The connection here is pretty obvious – Pokemon Go is entirely based on your physical location. It’s an augmented reality game that mostly consists of an interactive map you engage with that reflects your local surroundings.

That burger joint you love might be a Pokemon Gym, your street might be full of Rattata, and the center of town is literally stuffed of children playing Pokemon Go.

The whole concept of the game is about interacting with your actual physical surroundings. The game determines this information by looking at your IP address and using your smartphone’s GPS signal.

That said, there are plenty of countries where Pokemon Go is not allowed, either because it has not been released, or is banned. If you’re in those countries, proxies allow you to play anyway.

Use a proxy when creating your Pokemon Go account and logging in, and watch as it tricks Niantic’s servers into thinking you are from the country where your IP is located.

 You just need to purchase a private proxy from a country that does have the game – like the U.S. – plug in the proxy settings to your mobile device, and download the app. Niantic will believe you’re in the U.S., and you’ll be able to get the game and log in no problem.

Bare Countries and Geolocation Spoofing

The major wrinkle in this plan is that some places that have banned Pokemon Go, or places where Niantic has not put in any Pokemon, are completely bare.

While the proxy makes the game work for you, your phone will still send a GPS signal that shows where your actual location is, not your proxy location. Walking the streets of Iran, where Pokemon Go is banned, will probably not have any Pokemon.

If that’s your case it’s a bit harder to play the game – you can’t catch any of ’em, let alone all of ’em. You’ll want to research geolocation spoofing to combat this, specifically apps that allow you to adjust your smartphone map’s settings. This is possible for Android, but more difficult for iOS.

If you can get it to work, there’s another benefit to geolocation spoofing. Even if your country does allow Pokemon Go and has plenty of them, you can use geolocation spoofing to travel to new places without ever actual going there.

Pokemon Go has different Pokemon in different physical locations, so if you can trick your phone into “being” in those locations, you’ll find a lot more Pokemon.

This won’t always work perfectly, and it goes without saying that if you get caught geolocation spoofing by Niantic, you’ll get banned right away. Not to mention what your country may do if it catches you…

2. Walk a Thousand Miles, Hatch Eggs like a Chicken

The next proxy hack for Pokemon Go uses proxies as a source of protection, rather than a process in and of itself.

You see, using proxies not only has the ability to change your geolocation, but it provides a much higher degree of anonymity. Most people use proxies for just this reason – they don’t want their actual location broadcast around the internet.

As such, using a proxy is how most internet-savvy individuals operate. “Most” is not the term for hackers – all hackers use proxies. There’s no way to protect yourself otherwise.

As such, this step uses proxies for protection and anonymity.

Hatch ‘Em All

Assuming you have some proxies to use, you’ll now need to get another service. Typically called a “bot”, this service was created by coders to help you tweak the system.

In this case, the bot will allow you to walk many miles in Pokemon Go without lifting a foot. The how of this is complicated and code-heavy, but the why of it should be clear.

The eggs you collect in Pokemon Go require a great deal of physical walking to hatch, and this is a way to get new Pokemon not in your general location.


Instead of going on a hike everyday, people use bots to simulate walking so that, upon opening your game each evening, you’ll have a bunch of eggs ready to hatch, saving you all the precious time that it takes to walk around.

Until it got shut down, NecroBot was the most popular Pokemon Go bot around. You can continue checking out the GitHub to see if it gets reinstated, or look around for more bots.

3. Collect at Work (or Anywhere)

You’ll begin to see that bots can be programmed to do pretty much anything a human might do. The key to tricking Niantic is the coding must be good enough that it looks like a human is doing it.

The most straightforward way to hack Pokemon Go with a proxy? Get a bot to do all your Pokemon collecting for you.

Yes, that’s right, sign up with a bot like Insta-PokeGo, login to your Go account, and wait for it to do its dirty work.

The bot will capture Pokemon for you, including traveling to new locations in order to collect rare Pokemon. Not only will it do this fairly flawlessly (until it gets shut down, because it will), but you don’t need to use your phone for it. Just go to the website, login, and the next time you check your phone your in-game collection will be massively improved.

If that sounds a little ridiculous and unfair, welcome to the world of proxies and hacking. This is how you can get a leg up on all those kids with all their free time.

4. Level Up!

Following on the hot-heels-bot of the above example, you will also automatically get experience whenever you use a bot to play the game for you.

Each time the bot catches new Pokemon, visits new places, or stops in at a shop you’ll gain the normal experience you would if you were playing the game yourself.

Some people might find this to detract from the game itself – I mean, what’s the point if you’re not playing?

To those people I would remind them of the gamer’s obsession with being high level, and of games that are created to be more fun for players at a higher level.

For instance, you have to reach level five before you can even battle at a gym. You have to be a much higher level to catch interesting Pokemon, and to look like a boss in the Pokemon Go world.

A bot allows you to do this, playing the game while you work and sleep and eat, letting you return a glorified Pokemon Go hero.

Surely at some point you’ll turn it off and destroy your enemies with ease, catch the hardest Pokemon immediately, and revel in the awesomeness. That’s what you want, right?

5. Create Your Own World

For some people, playing in the world of Pokemon Go is way too cliche. You have to deal with everybody else snatching up your Pokemon, you have to abide by the laws Niantic has created, and you don’t get to rule your own imaginary landscape.

That changes with Pokemon Go MITM Proxy. This combination of a bot and proxy service allows you to take all the data transmitted by Niantic to your phone – the world of Pokemon Go – and alter it in your own server.

You don’t get to play with other people, or alter anything on Niantic’s “official” side of things, but you can have an entire world of Pokemon to yourself.

This includes catching Pokemon that aren’t yet available in the real Pokemon Go, like Mewtwo, Ditto, and certain rare birds.

It also means you can easily and automatically max out HP and other stats for every single one of your Pokemon.

A Fake “Real” World

With the above software you can also choose to continue playing in the collective Pokemon Go world, but transpose new skins over Pokemon you collect, making it look like you have caught a rare Pokemon, while in fact you just stumbled on another Diglet.

If you’re a trickster who needs to show people you have things that can’t exist (and then claim they do), this is your kind of service.

Go Pokemon Cheat!

Sorry, that header is a little mean. If you’re in a country that doesn’t have the app yet, the first step in this list is your golden ticket to playing before the game is released.

In basically every other scenario you’re going to be cheating, and cheating is what it is.

Make sure you always use elite private proxies when altering aspects Pokemon Go. These will ensure high speeds, true anonymity, and continued support while you (or the bot) plays.

Finally, remember that you can get banned. Check your Pokemon before you wreck them, alright?

The post 5 Ways to Use Proxies for Pokemon Go Hacking appeared first on GhostProxies Blog.

With over 450 million users, LinkedIn is the digital rolodex of the modern age. If you don’t have an account you should probably get one. You can rub shoulders with major players in your industry, creep on old high school acquaintances, and strategize your next business move.

That’s all for the normal user of LinkedIn, which I am, and which you should be.

However, for the scraper, LinkedIn has an entirely different meaning. Instead of connecting manually with people in an industry, scrapers see LinkedIn as a gold-filled mine of personal information. A mine with 450 million (and growing) nuggets, all of which can be harvested in a variety of ways.

Then there’s company profiles on LinkedIn, which is separate from individual users, and adds an entire other element for a scraper.

Why Scrape LinkedIn?

The answer should be clear: to get all that information. User profiles have names, email addresses, industries, skill competencies, etc. Companies have number of employees, job postings, current employees, and a host of other important data.

LinkedIn is a literal representation of people and companies in the workforce, and they keep their info up to date. This data is incredibly valuable.

Of course you can’t scrape all the data I listed above. But you can scrape some of it.

Does LinkedIn Allow Scraping?

Let’s all yell “NO!” together so the point gets across. LinkedIn is very, very against scraping of any kind. It recognizes the worth of its customers in terms of analytics and privacy and will continue to fight tooth and nail to keep scrapers off the site. You can read it’s clear statement titled “Prohibition of Scraping Software” to get the gist.

While that language is solid, this subject is best illustrated by the lawsuit LinkedIn took out against 100 anonymous data scrapers who did what you’re trying to do, but did it poorly. The verdict of the case has not been decided at the time of writing, and it brings up many issues around scraping that are beyond the purview of this article.

The point I’m trying to make is that if you do plan to scrape LinkedIn, be very cautious. They really don’t want you to do it, so if you plan to you have to do it right.

How to Scrape LinkedIn

Doing it right consists of many factors. You need to think about:

• The applications required to do the scraping
• The parameters you need to set in the applications
• The type of pages you will scrape on LinkedIn (public or private)
• The types of proxies to use, and how many proxies to use

LinkedIn Crawling Applications

There are specific applications meant for LinkedIn and LinkedIn alone — like Octoparse. Then there are multi-functional tools like Scrapebox.

Choosing an application is important, as many of them cost money. You’ll want to have a full understanding of the software itself, and then what you’re trying to get out of LinkedIn in order to make a solid return on your investment.

Due to LinkedIn’s policy against scraping I find it’s best to go with a dedicated software application for the service. However, if you already have Scrapebox or GSA (who am I kidding, you probably do) it’s worth testing these out before making another purchase.

Parameters within the Application

Once you’ve settled on an application you’ll need to adjust two key settings inside it. This is generally true for all scraping procedures, but specifically for LinkedIn as it is more sensitive than other websites.

1. Threads

Threads in scraping software details the number of open connections you are using to scrape. The more threads the faster the scrape; the more threads the faster you will get flagged and banned.

The very cautious use one thread per proxy. That’s what a true human does, so anything more than that will, at some point, become suspicious. However, plenty of scrapers use up to 10 threads per proxy.

Due to LinkedIn’s extreme policy against scraping, I recommend staying to the single thread per proxy. Yes, it will slow results and cost more in the long run. In my view those are costs built into scraping LinkedIn and avoiding a lawsuit.

2. Timeouts

The second major factor in adjusting your application’s scrape settings is timeouts. Timeouts are the literal amount of time it takes for a server to respond to a proxy before the proxy starts a new request.

If your timeouts are set to 10 seconds, your proxy will send another request for information from the server after 10 seconds of it not responding.

Many scrapers set the timeout very low: 1 or 2 seconds. This produces a huge number of results because it creates new requests for information often, meaning you get results more often.

Don’t do this. Set your timeouts high, between 30-60 seconds. This gives the server a solid pause before that particular proxy sends another request.

Think of it like a human: does a human reload a website’s home page every second if there is lag? Maybe, but they doesn’t do it a thousand times in a thousand seconds on repeat.

By setting your timeouts high you avoid a lot of the detection by LinkedIn and don’t overwhelm them with repeated requests.

Scraping Public Files on LinkedIn Through Search Engines

Moving away from the applications let’s get into LinkedIn itself. LinkedIn is primarily used as a private network. To see most of its information you have to create an account, log in, and start connecting with people.

However, it has plenty of public pages. These can be viewed without an account, and can therefore be scraped without logging in.

You are free to scrape public pages on LinkedIn like any normal scrape that starts with a search engine. You have to enter the correct search terms, like including “LinkedIn.com”, which will generate results in Google that point to specific LinkedIn pages.

Your scraper can then access the information available on these public pages and return it to you. You’ll be scraping both Google and LinkedIn in this context, so you’ll want to be careful not to set off the alarm bells for either of them.

You can get very specific with this, searching for an industry sector of company pages on LinkedIn through an engine, like Microsoft or Google or Apple. You would do this by scraping for “Apple LinkedIn” and then scraping the results.

This will only give you public pages though, and you may not want to be limited.

Scraping Private Accounts

The scraping of private accounts is the specific line in the sand that LinkedIn doesn’t want you to cross. It’s not happy that you scrape public pages, but they’re public, and there’s not much they can do about it from a legal standpoint.

Private pages are another matter. When a person signs up with LinkedIn they are told their information will be kept private, not sold to other companies, and used for internal use only. When a scraper comes along to grab that information LinkedIn has a major problem on its hands.

I don’t condone this activity if you’re using your scrape to sell an individual’s information. This basically means you’d be bypassing LinkedIn’s privacy clause, harvesting personal information from people, then selling it to companies for a profit. Not the coolest thing to do.

There are other reasons to scrape this information though. Maybe you’re on a job hunt and want to find programmers in a specific city, or available jobs in a new state. You can scrape for research, too. Either of these seems fine to me, but the for profit model doesn’t.

Create Accounts

The way to scrape private pages on LinkedIn is to create an account. Once you do this and actually log into LinkedIn you’ll be able to search as much as you want. Remember, this account isn’t for connecting with people, but as an access point to LinkedIn for a scrape.

To do this I recommend Octoparse. Their software allows you to log into LinkedIn with an account and apply specific searches and scrapes with a drag and drop interface, all while showing you the LinkedIn page you’re on. It’s very nice visually, if a little clunky to use.

You could figure out a way to do it with other applications but it won’t be as easy.

Search and Harvest

After creating the account, just figured out what you want to search. If you try and find Microsoft employees a ton of people will come up. You can have the scraper harvest any information that is available to you as a non-connection. Basically name, position, sometimes the email address.

Much of the information is still private unless you connect with people, and if you do that you’re basically just running a normal LinkedIn account.

Use a Proxy Per Account

By doing the above you are using a direct automation tool within LinkedIn. The potential for getting caught here is huge, so make sure to follow the threads and timeouts rules above.

Also, make sure you’re using one proxy IP address to create the account, and then scrape on that account. This is all about appearing like a human. Most humans don’t access LinkedIn from a different IP address every few hours. They access it from one IP address: their home address.

If you create the account with a proxy IP, use the same proxy IP to scrape on the account, and set all your parameters correctly you will greatly reduce the chances of getting blocked or banned.

Types and Number of Proxies

The final element in all this is the types of proxies you use, and how many of them you use. This coincides pretty heavily with your budget because more proxies (and better ones) equals more cash. Keep that in mind for this whole process.

Type of Proxy

You want elite private proxies for scraping LinkedIn. With a lawsuit under way, LinkedIn is not kidding around about punishing scrapers. This means you’ll want elite private proxies and only elite private proxies.

These proxies offer the most anonymous and secure HEADER settings out of all the proxy types, and give you unfettered access and speeds. Shared proxies or free proxies (even lesser private proxies) are simply not secure or fast enough to do the job.

You’ll also want to test your proxies to make sure they work with LinkedIn. Due to LinkedIn’s anti-scrape stance it has a large list of blacklisted IPs. If your proxies are in this list they won’t work at all. Contact your provider to get these details, or test it out for yourself and then chat with them.

Our dedicated proxies work great on LinkedIn.

Number of Proxies

Depending on the size of your scrape you’re going to need a number of them. The general rule of thumb is the more proxies the better, especially when scraping a difficult website.

If you stick to a single proxy per account and want to harvest a lot of data quickly, consider 50 accounts and 50 proxies as a place to get started.

If you want to do more proxies per account (which I don’t recommend), grab somewhere in the 100-200 range and rotate them often so they don’t get noticed, then blocked, banned, and blacklisted.

The fewer proxies you have the more often they’ll be detected. This is always an experiment, so make sure you test everything.

Wrapping Up

Scraping LinkedIn requires proxies and moxie. You have to really want to do it because it’s not going to be easy, and could result in blacklisted IPs or a lawsuit. As such, take precautionary measures. Understand why you’re scraping LinkedIn, and then reach those specific goals carefully.

When most people think of proxies they think of an anonymous agent, something that hides your identity from snooping eyes.

This is an entirely accurate concept. Proxies supplant your unique IP address (the one provided by your Internet Service Provider) with their own. That’s how they mask your identity.

However, it doesn’t paint the whole picture. Really, it just shows you the end result. That result is only valuable if it’s achieved — what happens when a proxy doesn’t work? Then it’s pretty useless, right?

Proxies aren’t the simplest piece of technology in the world — they require you to dig into your OS settings, browser settings, or specific software settings in order to be used properly. Even then, once you’ve entered all the information correctly, they can be finicky.

If your goal is to simply browse the web like a normal user, but with a proxy IP in place of your own, it won’t be too difficult. You may have to troubleshoot a bit to make sure your internet speeds stay fast and your identity is truly protected, but you should be just fine.

Where it gets more complicated is when you want to do bulk scraping through search engines. Or, really, any massive amount of pings and requests with proxies, as all of those requests will end up going through search engines.

Search Engine Blocks

The most common scenario for this in the scraping community is loading up a software application like Scrapebox with proxies, setting the request intervals and URL destinations, and clicking “Scrape.” Except, checking back in ten minutes, you find all the harvesting has halted and there’s an issue.

Another scenario is when you’re trying to use proxies to grab large batches of Ticketmaster tickets, or special edition Nike shoes with Nike proxies, or get the last .02 second bid on an eBay auction — in essence, when you’re using proxies to buy something. However, you get stopped in your tracks. Pages won’t load, a plethora of captchas show up, and you’re locked out.

In both of these cases the first culprit is the search engine. In the second example it could be those individual sites, which are known to have powerful anti-proxy technologies in place specifically to stop this kind of activity.


The good news is that in either situation the remedies are pretty similar. They have to do with what proxies you’re using and how you’re using them. In most cases, any issues you have can be solved with one (or all) of the methods below.

Methods for Bypassing Blocked Search Engines

Dedicated Proxies

This step is a bit high-brow because it’s really hard to find a reliable source of dedicated IPs, and if you do, they may cost more than you want to pay.

That said, if you’re serious about scraping and really don’t want to be blocked by search engines, using dedicated IPs is one of the best things you can do.

Essentially, IP addresses are either assigned by an ISP, or purchased through a proxy provider. Most of these providers get proxies for datacenters, massive buildings with huge servers. The datacenter IPs come in ranges, one IP after the other, a bit like the clone army in Star Wars.

Some advanced websites, like the ones mentioned at the beginning of this article, actually block entire ranges of IP addresses from datacenters, and have ways of telling if an IP is a datacenter or residential IP address. The key is to find a quality dedicated proxy provider who won’t oversell IPs so they’ll be higher quality and not get banned by search engines.

Rotate Your Proxies

Yes, this means you’ll need a batch of proxies to rotate. If you thought you could do heavy scrapes of the internet or large buys on heavily protected sites with a few proxies, you are sorely mistaken.

Depending on your level of scraping and how often you are running the software (some people do it 24/7), the amount of proxies you need will be different. In general I recommend batches of 10 proxies for the low-end scraping, 50 for a middle range, and over 100 (and up) if you’re getting serious.

The key here is to use software or a plug-in that allows you to paste your entire load of proxies at once, and then set a customizable randomizer.

For example, if you’re doing a medium amount of scraping and have 50 proxies to your name, tell the software to use 5-10 of those proxies at any given time. Then tell it to swap out new proxies, randomly, every three minutes.

This way your searches, which typically hit a website or search engine over and over and over, will rarely carry the same IP long enough to be traced or connected.

You could do the randomization manually, but it would take a very long time. Most scraping software includes this ability, as do certain browser extensions.

Rotating IP Providers

The next method in this step is to seek out a service that provides rotating proxies for you. This means that instead of buying a batch of 50 proxies, of which the IP addresses will generally stay the same, the provider will give you 50 new proxies every couple hours.

This has one incredible advantage: complete randomization. In the previous example, even if you were to use a randomizer in your software, you’d still be using the same 50 proxies, so there would be repeats.

If the proxy provider changes your proxies every couple hours it will be very hard for a search engine to legitimately block your proxies. This is even more true if you still randomize those random proxies, set their requests to a reasonable amount, and follow other rules of scraping.

This choice comes with two drawbacks:

Cost

Having frequent access to so many new proxies all the time will cost more than your typical service. This also assumes you’re already paying for proxies, instead of using free ones, which I’ll get into below.

Ease of Use

While completely new IP addresses every couple hours sounds great, you will need to find a way to easily port these into the software application you’re using. This can be a simple copy and paste, but for those who love setting their programs to run for days at a time, this might not work.

On the other hand, if you’re a coder, you could probably figure out a way to make this automated.

Don’t Use Free or Shared Proxies

You might have heard this bit of advice before, but in case you’re already not following it: don’t use free, shared or residential proxies.

Free Proxies

The above step, in which you rotate your proxies, can technically be done with free proxies you’re grabbing in batches off the web. In theory you could scrape massive lists of free proxies and put them in your randomizer, thereby making sure you don’t get hung up by search engines.

However, you’ll find that most of these proxies don’t work. You’ll get more blocks, time outs, and other issues with free proxies for a couple reasons.

First, they are overused. The fact that they’re free means anyone can use them, and that’s precisely who is using them at this moment. If one proxy has 15 people on it, all of whom are scraping, you’re not going to get through a search engine. It’s going to send up red flags, and your scrape will fail.

There are the rare gem free proxies with high security, the right country, quick speeds, and few users, but those will last for an hour or two. All good things come to an end.

If you’re serious about scraping over the long run, you will spend more time finding and switching out new free proxies than is worth the cost of paying for them.

Second, free proxies can contain malware, and typically alter your browser information through strange user agents and other methods. This means you might not get the information you need, and you can’t be certain of their security.

Shared Proxies

Shared proxies are the black sheep in the proxy world. You have to pay for them, but they are shared with other people. This means they cost less, but it also means they have an undetermined amount of random users, including you, all doing fairly private things.

It’s not entirely clear to me why someone would pay for shared proxies, unless they are really concerned about cost. Shared proxies are cheaper, but not so cheap that it makes them much better than private proxies.

The same issue present in free proxies — that they could be getting banned or badly associated by search engines and websites at any time without your knowledge — is true for shared proxies as well.

Even if you were to adjust your scrape settings perfectly to not get banned, three other people on the proxy might not, and therefore it gets blocked.

The overall gist: use private proxies if you want to stop getting blocked by search engines.

Randomize User Agents

Much like you need to randomize your IPs, you also need to randomize your user agents. User agents are other identifiers that browsers send to servers; they contain information like your browser type and OS.

Generally speaking this isn’t a huge issue, but if you scrape heavily it’s important.

Let’s say you have 50 proxies and you’re rotating them well. You’re reaping massive amounts of data, and it throws up Google’s red flag. Google will look at the user agents transmitted with each of these proxy requests. If every single one of them contains your exact user agent, your proxies will get blocked.

You can switch your user agents in software or through extensions, just like your proxies. It’s a good, easy step you can take to assure even less information is being transmitted about you, and that your proxies look really different from each other.

Stop Using So Many Search Modifiers

This one has less to do with proxies, and more about the way in which you’re trying to search or scrape a search engine.

Today, search is incredibly intuitive. You can type “nursery” into Google and it will pull up a list of plant-based stores in your area, a map of those stores, the websites of said stores, and then, later, general information about gardening and nurseries.

This is a far cry from the early days, when Google search terms were more difficult, technical, and complex in order to get the results you wanted. “Nursery” would have pulled up definitions of the word, and examples of baby rooms, and possibly some gardening information.

The point is that Google now expects the general populace, a.k.a. normal humans, to search in this easy, carefree manner.

Scrapers like yourself don’t have any interest in these search terms. You’re going after search modifiers — anything that lets you refine search to a very specific and fine point, like keywords in URLs and keywords without other keywords.

You can perform these searches through modifiers. It’s a great way to get the results you want, and therefore the data you want.

However, Google and other search engines aren’t stupid. They recognize when someone (or something) is searching with modifiers, and they know that means it’s likely not a normal user. That puts up a small red flag, which grows every time you repeatedly make a request of the same term or the same modifier slightly tweaked.

All of this sets a search engine on your scent. If you’re not careful (and performing the other steps here), they’ll block you.

Go about searching like a normal human, or at least set your request times low enough that the red flag won’t be raised.

Visit the search engine’s homepage first

This final step is also about how you search, and less about your proxy usage. Many unsuspecting scrapers and coders don’t think about the humanity that is necessary to get around blocks.

In this case, think about how a human goes about browsing. They go to google.com, type in their phrase, and then look through the results. Or they type it into the web browser search bar, which is basically the same thing.

Most scraper programs are designed to ignore that first step of actually going to google.com, or bing.com, or yahoo.com, and instead search a term immediately.

This is super obvious to a search engine, especially when it’s repeated hundreds (or thousands) of times in a short time frame with similar IP addresses.

Hopefully your scraper has the ability to visit multiple URLs — if it does, always start at the search engine’s home page. If it doesn’t, you may have to code your own.

Blocks Begone

A blocked proxy is a sad, frustrating thing. The most common reason a search engine will block your request is due to the above issues — go through the list, make sure you’re operating as best as you can, and try again.

If you’re still getting blocked you should consult your proxy provider, and see if another provider may work better.

What happened the last time you wanted to cop fresh sneakers from a Shopify website?

Here’s a wild guess – the site crashed, and by the time it came back up, the entire limited-edition stock was sold out.

This happens every time a new set of Yeezys hits the market. It happens on all over the Internet, all at the same time.

The good news is that once you learn why this happens, you can set up a system that virtually guarantees you get access to the latest sneakers on the block the second they go on sale. Enter the world of Shopify proxies for footsites and learn how to automate shoe bots to do your buying for you.

Importantly, this guide can be used for any situation where e-commerce sites get flooded with traffic in response to new releases. You can use Shopify proxies to buy concert tickets, video games, smartphones – basically any fast-selling product you would consider camping outside a brick-and-mortar store to own.

What Happens the Moment New Kicks Get Released?

In the 21st century, you don’t need to camp outside brick-and-mortar stores to get your hands on the newest products to market. But you do have to beat your competition to be the first to successfully make that order.

The Internet might seem unlimited, but its rests on physical networking technology that’s responsible for transferring data from your computer or smartphone to a far-off web server. In the case of e-commerce store websites, there is only so much bandwidth that the store can offer – when a major release comes along, the site gets stuck and shuts down.

Think of bandwidth as the Internet’s plumbing. In a regular environment, the amount of traffic an e-commerce store is more-or-less constant, allowing for a few peak periods around the holidays.

But when a fresh pair of Yeezys hits or the Nintendo Switch hits the market, traffic spikes up to levels that no amount of networking infrastructure can handle. The plumbing gets blocked and the majority of users – minus a lucky few – get turned away.

Although there is huge demand for footsite proxies, the world record for fastest-selling online product goes to the K-Pop boy band Exo, who sold 67,040 tickets in less than a second. High-frequency stock traders are known to build entire datacenter next to the stock market building so that they can shave all-important milliseconds off of their trades.

How to Get Ahead of the Competition

You might not really need to build an entire datacenter just to cop fresh sneakers the moment they go on sale, but you can use the same strategies that high-frequency traders and K-Pop concertgoers use.

The key is knowing when and where the new product releases are occurring, and then optimizing your approach using the latest tools on the market to get them for yourself. Let’s cover the specifics first:

Be Prepared for the Release Date

You’ll never get your footsites game off the ground if you don’t know when the release date is. Not only do you need to know the date, but you must also know the specific time of day that the release goes online.

Fortunately, when it comes to sneakers, there are plenty of options when it comes to learning when the next release is. Consider SoleLinks or JustFreshKicks – two of the most popular websites for making your own Nike, Air Jordan, and Adidas release calendars.

Be sure to check your sources often, because manufacturers have a tendency to schedule and reschedule release dates based on sales projections and fabrication issues. In the footwear industry, release dates can often be delayed or pushed earlier. Keep yourself informed so you can act when the time is ripe.

Know Where the Product is Dropping

When it comes to the question of the product release is occurring, there are two factors to keep in mind: the digital location and the physical location.

Digital location refers to the website you are planning on buying from. Just like release dates, release sites can change over time as new branding and sales agreements take form. You definitely don’t want to see yourself waiting for a release that will never come.

Physical location refers to the datacenter housing the server that your computer will access when making the purchase transaction. It doesn’t necessarily match the physical location of the store – but it can. This takes a bit of research but it can be extremely important.

So why does physical server location matter?

Think of the high-frequency traders moving datacenters next to stock exchanges to earn valuable milliseconds. They do this in order to reduce the ping latency between their devices and the servers they access.

Ping latency is measured in milliseconds and refers to the time is takes a signal from your computer to reach the website you’re trying to access. The faster your ping rate is, the better your chances of copping new sneakers before anybody else does.

Optimize Your Browser

Choosing the right browser is important when you’re racing to be the first to get your hands on any new product online. Google Chrome has extensions and features that can make the experience go much smoother.

Mozilla’s new Firefox is another good choice. Technically, it is faster than Google Chrome, but Chrome outperforms Firefox when it comes to loading HTML5, the web programming language used by Shopify and most other e-commerce websites.

Whichever you choose, you’ll want to auto-fill your payment data in the browser. You can also use Chrome’s Page Monitor or Firefox’s Check4Change to receive a notification as soon as the website you’re targeting changes. Just be sure to turn it off once you’re in the queue to buy – you could lose your place.

How Do Shopify Proxies Fit into the Plan?

So far, we have a good plan for being the first in line to purchase any online product likely to sell out the moment it’s released. However, there is one more problem to overcome – the problem of scale.

Even if you have the fastest browser and click at just the right time to get in the sales queue of your favorite Shopify website, you are just one device out of tens of thousands (or more) trying to access the same service.

In order to guarantee that you get in the queue, you need to multiply your potential. That means multiplying the number of requests you make to the web server in question.

If you had dozens of computers on-hand, you could do this by having people repeatedly refresh the page and enter your payment information until one makes it through. But unless you own a call-center (and aren’t afraid to blatantly abuse company resources), that’s just not happening.

But this is the 21st century. You don’t need to own dozens of computers to multiply your web potential. You only need to temporarily use them – and that’s where dedicated servers and proxies come into play.

What is a Private Server and How Does It Help?

Let’s say you want to learn how to cop sneakers directly from Nike’s website. A simple WhoIs search shows that Nike’s technical contact is the company’s own on-site Internet Domain Administrator located in Beaverton, Oregon.

That means that if you rent the use of a private server located in Beaverton, Oregon to prepare for an upcoming release, you will have the fastest possible ping time and the best chance of scoring the sneakers.

Similarly, if you were to try the same tactic on Adidas, you would need to rent a server in Nuremburg, Germany. If you try to access the website from halfway across the world, you will lose out to competing buyers who happen to be geographically closer to the server in question.

You can use either a dedicated server or a virtual private server for this. There are some key differences between the two:

Dedicated servers are actual physical pieces of hardware that you control to accomplish a task. It’s like renting computer time at the local library, except the library is a datacenter anywhere in the world.

Virtual private servers are digital operating systems that reside on physical systems. In this case, you may be sharing physical resources like CPU power and RAM with other users, but you still enjoy a guaranteed minimum based on your agreement with the hosting provider.

As HostGator mentions, dedicated servers are typically meant to host websites with more than half a million monthly visitors. Using one might be overkill for getting a pair of sneakers – unless you want to buy a pair of Jordan 4 Retro Eminem Carhartts to the tune of $20,000.

Proxies Make Sure You Don’t Get Banned

The key to making this entire strategy work is configuring your server to use proxies to access the e-commerce site you are trying to target. If a Shopify site sees the same request coming in from the same IP address repeatedly, it will automatically block that address, thinking that it’s a DDoS attack . More proxies = more success on Shopify.

If that happens, your chances of success quickly dwindle to zero. Reconfiguring your IP address or getting a new server simply takes too long.

Proxies mask the origins of Internet communications. They do this by filtering requests (like the request to access a certain web page) through a secondary server. The target server sees the request coming from a different location and treats it like a different request. It doesn’t know that you’re behind them all.

The best Shopify proxies have the following features:

Security

This is obviously the most important factor. Do not use any type of proxy besides dedicated Shopify proxies. You’re sending credit card information through a proxy. Don’t trust a free proxy or a residential proxy for this or you may end up paying dearly for it.

Close Location

If your server is in a certain city and your proxies are halfway across the world, you’re taking one step forward and two steps back. Make sure your proxies are physically located near your server and near the store’s servers.

Rotating IP Addresses

Dedicated and private servers typically offer you a stable IP address, which is best for Shopify. Rotating proxies will not work well for Shopify because hundreds of other people are using the same IPs as you (and most rotating proxy services are residential on home computers).

With multiple dedicated, static Shopify proxies operating on multiple accounts accessing one footsite, you are almost fully prepared to win the race when new products get released. There is just one last piece of advice you need to know:

Set up every Shopify proxy with a different credit card on auto-fill. This is the only thing that truly limits your ability to leverage an unlimited number of proxies. Shopify sites treat multiple requests using the same credit card data as a red flag and respond by banning users.

Take out as many cards as you can, ask friends and family to help out and you just might earn yourself the distinction of being the next owner of the most in-demand shoes on the market.

In our always-on, hyper-connected digital world of shameless selfies, meal prepping promotion and misleading jet-setting vacation trips, anyone can become an influencer due to the possibilities from social media.

Whether you’re an established business or just starting your own personal brand, Instagram is a powerful platform enabling you to build a following, grow your brand and increase profits.

If you’re new to Instagram, consider yourself late to the party. Starting at zero in a highly saturated community can make climbing Mt Everest seem easy. That’s because, as fun, as it is to post photos, comment on other posts and follow your friends if you’re a business, you need to be active on social media 24 hours a day. Truth is, unless you’re Gary V, being “on” 24/7/365 is impossible. That’s where automation comes in. And in order to do it properly and protect yourself, you’re going to need dedicated proxies.

Instagram Automation

With a monthly user base of 350 million, Instagram provides a plethora amount of potential traffic you could be driving to your account. But because manually driving this traffic is impossible, developers created bots to tackle all the mundane and mind-numbing tasks automatically.

How It Works

Bots do everything that you would do but on a larger and hopefully more strategic scale. It’s very easy to go down a long rabbit hole of wasted hours when you mindlessly peruse Instagram. From the oddly satisfying videos to the adorable cats to the laugh-out-loud memes, liking, commenting and following users is entertaining to most. At best, these types of engagement provoke others to follow in a reciprocal matter. But as mentioned above, you can’t possibly do this at all hours of the day. And especially if you have multiple accounts you’re managing. Bots, on the other hand, have this artificial superpower.

There are a handful of automation tools at your disposal and you’ll want to do your due diligence to find the best ones for you. Regardless of the type of automation tool you use, you want to setup your bot to act in a way that lines up with your goal. One of your goals should be authenticity. Or at the very least, appear to be authentic.

If you’re not careful in setting up your bot, you run the risk of putting yourself in some pretty awkward situations. The point of automating is to like, follow and comment without a humans involvement. You’ll want to set up your comments to be generic enough to where it’s appropriate for a variety of hashtags and accounts but specific enough to appear authentic and genuine. Some may argue that because the bot will like and comment generically, it cannot provide genuine engagement. The truth is, you can setup your bot to provide value in an authentic and genuine way in a hyper-focused strategy.

The Ethics of Instagram Automation

Like all ethics-related questions, the use of automation for Instagram and other social media is a toss up. It is however a direct violation of Instagram’s terms. That’s why the popular automation tool Instagress was shut down.

The point of social media is to be “social”. Using an automation tool to replicate humans’ social behavior in the digital space is like sending a robot to network on your behalf at your work happy hour. It might be able to accomplish the same goal but is still technically fake, inauthentic and impersonal.

Regardless of where you stand in this divide, it’s safe to assume bots will always be around and fortunately, you can automate engagement without being spammy. Invest appropriate amount of time to build out your marketing campaign in a way that truly adds value to other users and the community as a whole by replicating your typical human behavior.

But keep in mind, because it’s a direct violation of Instagram’s terms of use, you run the risk of getting completely banned or deleted if you’ve been spotted as a spammer. Instagram will find you and they will shut you down. So the number one rule of Instagram automation – don’t get caught.

Instagram Proxies And Why It Matters

The lure of automation tools is to do tasks automatically and at scale. This means they – the tools – will make a lot of requests via the internet in a short time. The Instagram server can easily recognize an abnormal amount of requests and raise a red flag, potentially resulting in your account blocked or deleted.

What exactly is an Instagram Proxy?

Here’s an obligatory explanation of what a dedicated proxy for Instagram is and how it differs from regular dedicated proxies.

Understanding how the internet and Instagram works is beyond the scope of this article but in a nutshell, when you get on a computer, or another device, to access the internet and make a request (e.g. visiting Amazon or conducting a search in Google, etc), your computer sends that request to the internet network (which is simply a connection of computers). Once it finds the information you requested, it sends it back to your computer. In order to send and receive information, your computer needs “an address” or an identifier of sorts to communicate with other computers. That’s your IP address.

If you’re connected wirelessly through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), you are usually automatically given a temporary IP address for the duration of your session. If you connect through a local area network (LAN), you most likely have a permanent IP address.

When using dedicated proxies that are optimized for Instagram, you’ll have a lower chance of getting blocked due to the actions of other users.

This is advantageous for a handful of reasons. If you create multiple accounts for the sake of building followers and likes from the same computer, Instagram can track the address and figure out the accounts are fake. Dedicated Instagram proxies allow you to connect to all of your accounts from one computer but with different IP addresses that aren’t shared with anyone else, thereby making you appear legitimate (by dispersing you around the world).

There are many types of proxy providers you can purchase from. Instagram only allows you to connect 5 accounts per IP address so depending on how many accounts you’ll be managing, you may need more than 1 proxy server. If you find yourself needing more than 20 proxies from one single computer, you may want to consider having a Virtual Private Server to handle multiple proxies seamlessly.

Why Use Instagram Proxies

As mentioned above, Instagram proxies allow an individual user to connect multiple accounts to the social media platform without raising suspicion. Marketers who manage several accounts on behalf of their clients will need proxies to protect each account. By having each account on a separate proxy, there won’t be a conflict of interest with each client.

But you may also need proxies even if you’re one business. For example, if you’re a clothing brand, you may want one account to promote women’s clothing, another to promote male’s clothing, a third to promote your children’s line, a fourth for accessories and so on so forth. Combining a social media automation tool and Instagram proxies allows you to connect and manage all your accounts in one place and grow your brand.

Unfortunately, most marketers assume that by setting up automation tools and proxies, they’ll automatically increase their following, traffic and revenue. The reality is, 3rd party tools can never substitute strategy, they can only enhance it. Thus, you’ll need to identify your niche and your unique selling proposition, create your ideal buyer persona and finally, develop a strategic distribution strategy based on high-value content.

Picking Your Instagram Tools

There are a variety of proxy types and providers you can choose from. A public proxy is a server that’s accessible by all users connected to the internet. A semi-private proxy is a proxy owned by a group of people. For ultimate security, you’ll want to avoid both of these types of proxies and instead get a private dedicated proxy. It’s an individual server solely dedicated to you. You can review and purchase proxy providers at BestProxyProviders website.

For automation tools, some of the most popular ones used to be Massplanner and Instagress until they got shut down. Some that are still up and running are FollowAdder, Hootsuite, Gramblr, and SocialPilot. There’s no guarantee these providers won’t get shut down either in due time but in the meantime, are definitely worth utilizing.

In Conclusion

Simply being on social media for any brand or individual is not enough if your goal is to grow.

Successful marketing campaigns require a number of things (high-performing content, great products or services, etc) and automation is a critical one as well. Automation gives you the chance to exponentially increase your traffic. But you have to be careful on how you run your accounts.

Start slow in regards to the number of likes, follows, comments and account creation and only increase when you get the hang of it. You want to appear “human”. With dedicated proxies, you can successfully deceive Instagram into appearing as a “human” in a different location and thus, prevent them from connecting the dots and banning all of your accounts.