How to Block Abuse From Residential Proxy Connections

As fraudsters evolve and evade detection, it’s critical that businesses adopt new methods of blocking abuse from residential proxies. These proxy connections are a major driver of fraud in the form of competitor click fraud, free trial abuse, account registrations, and other types of fraudulent activity. The problem is that traditional detection solutions such as CAPTCHA, device behavior analysis, bot detection, and VPN detection are unable to effectively detect traffic coming from residential proxies. This makes them a perfect target for bad actors who are seeking to bypass fraud filters to carry out their activities.

Fraudsters use residential proxy fraud to mask their identity and steal data. They use scraper bots to quickly replicate content and code from websites, creating spoof sites that trick victims into entering their credentials. They also employ residential proxies to hide their location and delay detection of their malicious activities by websites that block data center IP addresses.

How to Check if an IP Address is a Residential Proxy

Fraudsters also use residential proxies to purchase products or services from e-commerce sites at lightning speed, reselling them later for a profit. They rely on these proxies to avoid being blocked by sites that implement fraud prevention measures such as anti-bot technology, anti-IP spoofing, and IP reputation checks. To protect against this type of fraud, it’s crucial to use solutions that integrate intelligence from multiple data sources, such as behavioral patterns, geo anomalies, and device fingerprint spoofing. It’s also important to regularly review and update your list of approved proxies, using only those that have good reputation scores and noting any suspicious activity.