Being safe and private online is one of the most important concerns we have in this day and age. Every business and even every average user needs to consider what they can do to protect their privacy online.
One of the ways of doing so is to use rotating proxies and therefore hide your digital identity online. It’s a simple enough tool at least from the viewpoint of the user, even though it uses complicated technology to hide your IP address and keep you safe online.
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What are Rotating Proxies?
Rotating proxies are servers that are used to rotate your IP address amongst a pool of addresses provided by the proxy. This means that you can go online and use the services that you’re ordinarily using and your IP address will change in the process without you noticing.
That way your online footprint is harder to detect since you’ll appear to change IP addresses and therefore locations and providers now and then making your location harder to trace and find. There are many different uses for rotating proxies that go beyond just basic safety, even though safety is important as well.
Hiding Your Identity Online
Sometimes, it’s important to hide your digital identity online. That can be the case even when you’re not doing anything concerning or illegal. Accessing websites and services with a new IP address can have its benefits too since it allows you to access them as a new user would every single time, the IP address is rotated.
This means you can revisit some sites and some services and your data won’t be remembered. Therefore, the service also wouldn’t be tailored based on your previous visits. It’s a helpful feature in some contexts.
Is Using This Service Legal?
It’s perfectly legal to use rotating proxies. There are no laws prohibiting the use of the service anywhere in the western world, at least. China has some restrictive policies when it comes to VPNs that may apply to rotating proxies as well, but citizens of China use them nevertheless. Most of such services are able to go through the great firewall of China.
In some cases, your internet provider may forbid you from using rotating proxies. However, this isn’t a legal requirement and in the worst-case scenario, it can lead to the termination of your contract and nothing more.
Is it Detectable?
For the most part, your internet provider won’t be able to detect you’re using rotating proxies and the sites and online services you’re using won’t be able to do it either. There are governmental institutions that can do so, but those are never used to monitor the internet use of ordinary services.
You can use the internet as you otherwise would while having the service activated. It’s also possible to use it more deliberately if you plan to do that scraping which is a process with which rotating proxies can help a lot.
Pre Configured Rotation
There are many ways in which the rotation is organized. This may be a bit on the technical side of things and there are users who won’t even be aware of how the IP addresses will rotate. However, in some cases, it may be useful to switch between one pattern to another.
A pre-configured rotation is the one where the service determines how the IPs will switch from one to another based on the pre-configured list. There’s nothing a user can do about which IP address they will use next. There’s a set time after which the IP address will rotate to the next one on the list.
A Specific Rotation
The opposite option is to use a specific IP address. This means that the user gets a list of IP addresses that they can choose from and they select which IP address will be used next. They can also choose the order in which the IP addresses will rotate.
This isn’t something most users will need but if you want to have control over what your IP address is and to keep a list of those used – it is the best way to go. The instructions for how to change from one rotation to the other are relatively simple as well.
Random Type Rotation
Random IP address rotation means that the IP address is chosen from a pool of addresses provided to you, but there’s no system or configuration to it. The addresses change based on the timeline you’ve agreed to and there’s no way of knowing which one will be next since it works based on the random numbers generator.
This is probably the safest option out there since no one knows what the next IP address will be. Not even the provider of the service can know which IP address will be chosen next.
Burst Type Rotation
Burst IP rotation refers to the system of rotations in which the IP address is changed at random but after a set number of connections. For instance, when you connect ten times using the same IP address, it will change and select one from a pool of addresses you have available.
Which address will be selected is randomized. Therefore, it can be said that it’s a mixture of the rotation types we mentioned above. This option is especially important for those who work in internet scraping and plan to visit the same site several times.
Can You Benefit From Rotating Proxies?
All users can benefit from using rotating proxies. It’s a way to keep your identity private while using the internet and this is something that everyone needs. There are users who could benefit from it more than others, but it doesn’t mean it’s a niche tool that an average user can’t take advantage of.
Those who plan to revisit a few sites, many times one after another will especially benefit from this tool. It will help them remain anonymous while doing so and it can even prevent you from getting banned once the pattern of your visits is noticeable.
