What is a residential proxy?
A residential proxy routes someone's traffic through another household's internet connection, so a sign-up appears to come from an ordinary home broadband or mobile IP address in the chosen country. For fraud teams it is the hardest kind of proxy to spot, because by IP address alone it looks like a real customer.
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Residential, datacenter and VPN: the difference
| Exit type | Where the IP comes from | How visible it is |
|---|---|---|
| Datacenter proxy | A hosting or cloud provider | Easy: the network owner is a hosting company |
| VPN | A VPN provider's servers | Often listed by VPN-detection data |
| Residential proxy | Home and mobile connections of other people | Hard: the network owner is a normal internet provider |
Residential proxy networks get their exits from devices whose owners run an app or software that shares their connection, sometimes without understanding what they agreed to. Paid plans let a buyer pick a country, or a city, and rotate to a fresh IP for each request.
Why multi-accounters pay for them
Operators learned to hold sign-ups from cloud servers and VPNs, so a farm that wants each account to look like a different household in a licensed market rents residential exits. It is more expensive per account, which in itself limits how far the abuse can scale.
What still gives a residential proxy away
The IP address hides well. The rest of the sign-up often doesn't:
- The browser's time zone. A browser set to one country's time zone while the IP is in another is a classic sign of a borrowed location. InlineShield compares the two and, by default, holds a mismatch for review.
- The email address. Rotating the IP does nothing for a repeat Gmail inbox or a temp-mail domain.
- The client. Proxies are usually driven by scripts, and headless browsers and automation frameworks leave traces of their own.
To be clear about limits: InlineShield does not keep a list of residential proxy exits, and our free IP checker will usually report such an IP as "Not a VPN, Tor or hosting IP", because on IP data alone it is one. The other signals do the work. See VPN, Tor and datacenter detection and multi-accounting for sportsbooks.
Frequently asked questions
Is a residential proxy the same as a VPN?
No. A VPN exits from the provider's own servers; a residential proxy exits from other people's home or mobile connections.
Should I block residential IPs?
No. Almost all of your real players use one. Judge the whole sign-up instead.
Can I look up an IP myself?
Yes, with the free IP risk checker. It shows whether an IP is a VPN, Tor exit or datacenter, with its network and country.
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