As we look back at the history of IT and telecommunications, the internet stands as the crown jewel, the magnum opus achievement of computer science. From complex computers to primitive gadgets, everywhere we look is an object with incredible computational power.
Now that we also have billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices communicating with each other over the web, information technologies have begun to encapsulate every moment of our lives. However, with every step taken towards comfort, efficiency, and convenience, modern tech companies take another big bite out of the right to digital privacy.
While expecting online anonymity without going off the grid is no longer possible, internet privacy enthusiasts keep looking for ways to enjoy an anonymous browsing experience. However, first, we must look at reasons why online privacy is beneficial for all parties, both private internet surfers and up-and-coming businesses.
In this article, we will start by addressing the main reasons to fight back for online privacy, as well as present some simple yet incredibly effective solutions that can provide immediate results. For example, connecting to the web with a France proxy will offer you a browsing experience from the point of view of a French resident. While this step may seem insignificant, the amount of private information within your public IP address is astounding, especially with the blatant exposure of approximate geolocation. If you hide your identity with a new IP from a France proxy, web server owners no longer have a way to track your activity during browsing sessions unless you are connected to any created accounts. For more detailed information on this topic, check out Smartproxy – a privacy-first proxy provider with a great quality-to-price ratio on all available deals.
Protect personal information
With trackers and third-party cookies all over the place, the surveillance that occurs during browsing sessions is getting out of control. With the goal to personalize every user and present the most relevant ads, modern companies eliminate the comfort of the average web surfer, as the lust for valuable personal information feels too irresistible.
Unlike hackers and cybercriminals, modern tech companies are not known for stealing bank account information. They choose an alternative option – turning us into the most desired product. With the creation of the most entertaining social media platforms, these companies can experiment with running personalized ads, as well as reconstruct a lot more personal information about your online activities.
User agents that carry information about your operating system and browser version may seem like insignificant data segments, but by knowing these details about your software, tech companies can have multiple consistent data points. If one of them changes, all the profiled information slightly shifts, and tech companies still know that the transmitted connections come from the same user.
Preserve anonymity
In its infancy, one of the biggest attractions of the internet was its personal anonymity. With private connections where nobody knows who is communicating on the other end, the web was simple, private, and full of potential.
Fast forward to today, complex information systems rule the internet. On mobile, we have apps that have access to our audio, video, GPS location, and even the entire filesystem. For browsing sessions, most popular websites and social media platforms are full of third-party trackers that monitor browsing sessions for surveillance.
In 2023, no one on the internet is truly private. However, web privacy tools are a great way to minimize your digital footprint, block invasive trackers and ads, and give up as little private data as possible.
Anonymous browsing sessions are useful for business-oriented tasks too. Web scrapers and social media management bots are popular automated tools that need internet access to send HTTP requests and perform scripted tasks. However, because recipient web servers can recognize them, as well as the irregular increase of internet traffic, automated tasks get interrupted by IP bans.
For both the regular browsing sessions and data-driven business tasks, we need a solution that ensures anonymity and offers more flexible browsing sessions.
Recommended solution – residential proxies
Residential proxies are intermediary addresses that come from devices that receive their public IP from Internet Service Providers (ISP). Top proxy server suppliers have millions of residential addresses which you can use to reroute your browsing sessions. Residential proxies look like real users and cannot be easily detected without footprinting and other measures.
With Residential IPs, every connection is tied to a real physical address. Unlike its cheaper counterpart, a data center proxy, residential IPs have legitimate ISPs providing these identities. Of course, you can choose a cheaper data center IP, but if one of its addresses was banned before, web server owners can identify over identities in the same bulk and ban them. Meanwhile, residential IPs are not interconnected, and a bigger server fleet will help you find IP addresses in any country in the world.
Residential proxies are great for web scraping and private internet browsing. With millions of addresses worldwide, the user can get an authentic IP address and unblock geo-blocked websites or just enjoy the anonymous, altered version of the internet that is only available to that specific location.