Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Internet users are more and more worried about online privacy, especially with increased monitoring, data risks, and hacking. Many individuals use different ways to keep their online actions and identities hidden, like VPNs, Tor, or proxies from homes. Still, these methods have downsides like speed, dependability, expenses, or traceability. That's why a fresh pattern is showing up in the proxy marketplace: mobile proxies.

Mobile proxies and how do they work

A mobile proxy works as a mediator, giving a device a mobile IP instead of a home IP or a VPN. That is, mobile proxies help show as if the user is surfing the web through a cell data network, hiding their true address. This might sound like a subtle shift from household proxies. Still, due to the design of mobile data networks, significant changes occur behind the scenes. As a result, there's a higher chance mobile proxies are used by dishonest people committing scams and crimes online.

There are two critical methods of configuring mobile proxies: one involves using software on a device and turning it into a mobile proxy command center. The other leverages SIM card farms filled with piles of SIM cards; proxies are created employing mobile data devices and suitable software. When these proxies are ready, folks interested in browsing the web using a mobile proxy can buy or rent them.

Advantages of mobile proxies

Below are some of the marked benefits of mobile proxies over other types of proxies - all caused by how IP addresses get issued to mobile devices as proxies. Here are some of these advantages:

  • High anonymity: Mobile IPs are not unique. They thus send requests for information while hopping between several kinds of devices. This brings in the problem of tracing back to the source of such requests or identifying a particular device or user.
  • Low detection rate: Mobile IPs are generally more resistant to flagging and blocking websites or services. As such, IPs fall into the class of IPs classified as legitimate and trusted. With most other proxies, including other data center proxies, it is difficult to bypass the two, namely - geo-restrictions along with captchas and anything involving anti-bot measures.
  • Speed and reliability: The use of the latest 4G and 5G technologies by mobile proxies exhibits these significant advantages of the fastest and most stable connection. Without speed or latency loss, requests can be sent concurrently without limits on bandwidth and threads simultaneously using the proxy.

Risks and challenges of mobile proxies

Mobile proxies are surrounded by several challenges, most of which the users and providers need to learn about. The following are some of the most common ones:

  • Legal and ethical concerns: Misusing mobile proxies for evil or illegal activities like web scraping, ad fraud, account creation, spamming, or hacks. This would expose the users to legal risks, and it could also damage the reputational and security status of attacked websites or services1. In such a respect, the mobile network carriers may proceed with legal action against the providers of the mobile proxy services either in considering their activities as a breach of their terms of service or as a theft of their resources.
  • Technical issues: Mobile proxies rely on time, weather, traffic availability, and quality of mobile data in your location. Mobile proxies can rotate the IP as well, for example, every 2-5 minutes. And in this case, the address will be changed unexpectedly or too often.
  • Price and scope: Mobile proxies are more expensive than others, partly due to the extra hardware and maintenance. That being said, prices will vary depending on the vendor. Another disadvantage is the limited availability since usage can only occur where SIM cards and mobile network carriers exist in one's country or region of interest.

Leading mobile proxy providers provide quality data collection infrastructure for almost any use case. It boasts ten million+ mobile IPs from over 700 ASNs and targeting possibilities even at a city level, alongside its HTTP(s) and SOCKS5 protocols. It also offers residential, data center, and static (ISP) residential proxies and has a solution for site unblocking that overcomes even the best-advanced anti-bot systems. 

This uses proxies in web scraping, social media marketing, ad verification, SEO, and many more, with more than 5,000 happy customers. It also owns a Firefox extension that helps to switch among the proxies freely and set custom rules.

If you want to try Smartproxy, visit their website or the dashboard and choose the appropriate plan that fits your needs. They have live support that can be reached 24/7 for any information or help. It offers flexible pricing, a 14-day money-back option, and free trials for some of its products. Also, it provides the best value proxy service for web scraping and data collection solutions.