With hacking, malware, and major data breaches at an all-time high, cybersecurity has become a very real issue for burgeoning brands, especially those with an active web presence. Browsing sites and using apps while displaying your actual IP address could make your brand vulnerable to cyber-attacks or expose you to the risk of having your social media profiles or financial accounts flagged, limited, or banned. Connecting to the web using proxies will allow you to display the IP address of a proxy server instead. In this guide, we’ll discuss some of the proxy types that brands use to safely perform online activities related to marketing and data analysis:
What are Proxies?
When you
purchase proxies or pay for access to a proxy network, you’re
basically paying for access to an IP address – a string of numbers
that you would enter into the proxy settings of a browser, operating
system, or app. Once the proxy is set up – most providers will
assist you with this step – any site you visit will see the IP
address of your proxy server. These are the main types of proxies
used by businesses:
When you buy a
dedicated proxy that means you’ll be the only person using that IP
address. This is useful when you want to assign static IP addresses
to different accounts (i.e. Account #1 only logs in using dedicated
proxy #1) and be confident that your accounts aren’t linked with
others.
Shared proxies
can be found for cheap or even free, but they’re not the most
reliable option. However, they can be sufficient for anonymous
browsing or general data scraping activities on a
smaller scale.
Residential
proxies give you IP addresses that are provided by a regional
Internet Service Provider (ISP). This allows you to bypass
geographical filters that block or display content based on the
location of your IP address.
Data center
proxies are an option if you’re looking for exceptional speed and
performance, as these proxy servers are maintained professionally in
heavily equipped server farms.
How Companies use Proxies to Protect their Brand
Online
Every brand
faces a certain amount of reputation risk. There’s always the
possibility of a disgruntled customer, a jealous competitor, greedy
hacker, or other nefarious party sending problems your way. People
can initiate chargebacks
in PayPal, file complaints, flag your posts and comments, steal
financial data, and perform other actions that can cause your social
media and financial accounts to become banned, limited, frozen, or
deactivated. Using proxies ensures that your accounts don’t become
interlinked, so that if one account experiences problems you don’t
lose the entire brand or multiple businesses in the process. Aside
from diversification, here are some other ways companies use proxies
for brand protection:
Proxy servers
can be used to view your own ads from different geographical regions.
That way you can verify that geo-targeted ads are appearing properly.
Companies also
use proxies to crawl auction sites, e-commerce shops, and online
marketplace platforms like Amazon searching for evidence of copyright
infringement or counterfeiting.
Marketing teams
use proxies to access sites from different geographical IP locations,
so they can identify retailers and distributors that are selling
their products without authorization.
Choosing
the Right Proxy Provider
Choosing the
right proxy provider comes down to reading reviews on sites like
ProxyWay.com and comparing the following three factors:
How many IP
addresses can the provider give you access to? Networks with millions
of IPs are generally more reliable than their smaller counterparts.
Does the
provider allow for unlimited bandwidth or do they having varying
plans depending on the amount of traffic you’ll be sending through
the proxy?
Finally, always
check out a provider’s customer service quality before committing to
a plan. As a novice proxy user, you don’t want to be left without
support when you run into an issue you need help with.
Proxies are Necessary for Brand Protection
Ultimately,
using proxies just makes good business sense when you consider all of
the risks that come with using a single IP address across all of your
accounts.
When you’re ready to start scaling a company up, proxies give you the ability to do so while protecting your brand from cybersecurity and reputation risks.