Proxy detection is a vital tool in fraud prevention and cybersecurity, as it can reveal whether a user is truly connecting to your site. It also gives you a better understanding of a user’s intentions. It can reveal if they’re trying to access content that you’ve geoblocked, or if they’re using suspicious technology designed to change their IP address.
The best way to detect a proxy is to look at their IP addresses and network traffic. This can help you determine whether the connection is residential or data center. If you’re looking for a more detailed look at a specific IP, you can try ping tests or browser-based port scanning techniques.
Ping Tests: The simplest and most reliable way to detect a proxy is to run a ping test. This can give you an idea of how fast the connection is and how far away it is from your location.
WebRTC Tests: Another great way to test for a proxy is by looking at how long it takes to send a WebRTC packet. This is especially helpful for checking if a user has a VPN or Tor connected.
LAN and WiFi Proxies: These are not always easy to detect because they usually have different IPs than the actual IP. Nevertheless, they are often used by fraudsters to hide their true IP and gain access to blocked services or websites.
IPinfo’s Privacy Detection API is a powerful way to detect various methods of masking a users IP, such as proxy detection, VPNs, or tor usage. This API is updated daily, so it’s always fresh and accurate.
Dynamic Checks: The system uses concepts from Probability Theory and Machine Learning to generate a probability score of how likely a given IP is to be a proxy or VPN. This value is calculated in real time, based on large & frequently updated datasets.
If the value of the probability is 0 (exclusive) or 1 (inclusive), this means that it’s likely that the given IP is a proxy. If the probability is a value between 0 and 1, this means that it’s possible to determine if the IP is a proxy with dynamic checks.
It’s important to note that dynamic checks can change very quickly, and it is recommended to use them for a short time period. For example, it may take 6 hours before a dynamic ban list is completely updated, so if you want to rely on this for your detections, you should only cache values for that time period.
The best proxy detection APIs provide you with a number of different ways to detect a proxy, including static checks, dynamic checks, ping tests, and much more. They can also provide you with data about a user’s device, country, region, city, ISP, and more. These can be used in conjunction with the results of your own detections to provide a more complete picture. Ultimately, a good proxy detection API should be able to tell you if a given IP is a proxy and block them accordingly.