Proxy servers provide an increased level of security and performance by providing a private, anonymous gateway between your local network and the vast wide and sometimes wild world of the internet, with all of its inherent unknowns and risks.

between the sender of digital communications and the receiver. Incoming data comes in through one port of the proxy and is relayed to the internet via another outgoing port. The user’s original IP (Internet Protocol) address is masked behind the IP address of the proxy, providing a very effective layer of security for the proxy user.

Computer users ranging from the casual internet browser to advanced Big Data corporate professionals are turning to proxy servers as the best solution for increased security and performance in today’s Wild West

of the internet. Cloud-based SaaS technology, Software as a Service, has opened the door to nearly unlimited digital resources never before available to the public at large. As we’ll see, this is a two-edged sword which cuts both ways, and proxy servers are the shield.

The cloud-based digital age is a welcome trend for SMBs, entrepreneurs, and traditional brick and mortar businesses now in the process of digital transformation, but browsing with an easily identifiable IP address is analogous to leaving the front door of the office safe wide open. Hackers hone in on the most vulnerable targets, and those are the unprotected internet users who browse and transact business under their own static IP address. A compromised IP address can leave you and your business wide open to:

Protection From The Dark Side of the Cloud With Proxy Servers

Cloud-based technology quickly levels the business playing field, allowing enterprises to enter and compete effectively and profitably in global markets without the need to fork out huge amounts of investment capital for onsite IT hardware and network resources. But there is a dark side to the resource advantages of the Cloud.

Just as SaaS has its numerous benefits, these same digital resources can be exploited for CaaS, Crime as a Service. The weak link so frequently exploited by those bad actors on the dark side of the internet is direct access to your IP address. Proxy servers act as the first line of defense as a component of the network firewall and as a web filter between your computer and the dark side of the internet, providing defensive tools including:

The proxy blocks vital direct access which hackers could use to access your internal addresses and other digital details of your home or business network. The anonymity which proxies provide makes it much more difficult for malicious actors to target, access, and exploit critical personal or business data from the computers in your network. This level of difficulty for hackers is a very effective deterrent by itself. They will be much more likely to move on to the lower hanging fruit, targeting those numerous sites which they see as so ripe for the plucking, those which aren’t shielded from their sight by a proxy server.

The term “proxy” is most generally used interchangeably with “web proxy”, “proxy server”, or “web proxy server”. All of these various monikers refer to the same middleman function performed between the sender and the receiver known technically as an “application level gateway”. IP, or internet protocol, is the fundamental application level on which the entire internet functions today, and has functioned since its development way back in the 1980s. IP vulnerabilities are therefore very well-known.

In order to make orderly connections, every internet user has an assigned public IP address. A proxy server employs a network addressing strategy which makes one or more organization-wide IP addresses visible on the internet while masking the actual originating IP address.

The proxy, or proxy server, can actually be comprised of a single computer, a group of applications, or distributed physical servers which act as a funnel for all back and forth transmissions of user requests for common internet services. These include HTTP, HTTPS, for website access requests, SMTP for email handling, and SOCKS for back and forth TCP transmissions between clients behind firewalls.

The proxy server can be a dedicated computer or a software system functioning as the funnel or central hub, providing the important middleman intermediary between your computer and the internet. The proxy can exist in the same machine as the firewall or as a separate server which forwards outside requests through the firewall. Proxy servers provide significant advantages for those who use them above and beyond the security and

provide a significant performance advantage

for frequently requested websites. Anytime websites are requested repeatedly the proxy server caches those specific web pages for easy access by all users in your network which significantly reduces user response time. In many cases, the web page requested can be forwarded to the user without the need to make another outside internet request. This provides bandwidth savings when multiple users are sending the same request from the same proxy server simultaneously and the proxy server can forward the most recent copy of the page from its cache. The proxy can also log all network interactions which are helpful for troubleshooting as well as employee performance monitoring.

When a request is made the proxy server first checks its cache to see if the web page is already available for forwarding to the user. If the requested page or site is not in the cache the proxy uses one of its own IP addresses to request the page from the internet, acting as an independent

on behalf of the user. On the user side, the proxy is invisible. All requests and responses appear to be forwarded as if they’ve come directly from the internet.

On the request side, the website sees access from the various IP addresses of the proxy server and treats each request as if it is coming from separate contact points which appear to the site as numerous individual browsers. This is very important for advanced Big Data applications such as web scraping and web crawling, where the IP address could be blocked for too many requests coming from the Big Data software under the same IP address.

Proxy servers can serve multiple users with simultaneous connections or just a single user per server. Browsers can be configured to use automatically detected proxy servers or manual options for

The proxy server address is the IP address presented to the internet on your behalf, maintaining the highest level of anonymity and privacy for you and your computers and devices. Most commonly these are residential IP addresses available through your proxy service provider. The number of available IP addresses from many traditional proxy services may limit you to 5, 10, 15, or 25 proxies which don’t change until the end of the month. At ProxyRack we supply you with access to all of our available IPs which number 100,000 unique addresses daily and more than 1,200,000 monthly. We

When you are connected to a WiFi network the proxy server acts in its customary role as the intermediary between your device and the rest of the internet. This prevents websites from identifying your specific device since it sees only the IP address of the proxy server. This is a vital tool for smartphones and tablets, especially if business personnel in the field are using these devices to connect with the home office and conduct client transactions. Digital Citizen provides an informative tutorial on how to use a

proxy server for WiFi with Android devices at this link.

In today’s digital business environment decision-makers are quickly realizing that the internet has come to the point that enterprises must go with a proxy server or go home, especially if they want to avail themselves of the Big Data software that allows them to compete in highly contested business environments. For individual consumers, the proxy server expands internet access in novel ways such as unblocking

programs from other countries and provides more security for browsing on an open WiFi network at Starbucks or MacDonalds.

For online retailers, there is nothing more annoying to customers than a server crash when they require access to the website for product details or more importantly for purchasing. Proxy servers can balance server traffic so this doesn’t happen in the midst of a rush of orders for your red-hot product. A proxy server can store your essential data in a network of servers around the world via the cloud, and distribute the request load so no single server faces an overload.

Proxy Servers Save Bandwidth and Increase Speed

Data center management expert RJ Prego points out in his article 

“5 Reasons Your Company Should Use a Proxy Server”

, that there is a general misconception that proxy servers slow down internet speeds. Actually, proxy servers can save bandwidth and increase speed by caching frequently requested web pages as we mentioned above, as well as compressing traffic and stripping ads from websites.

Companies run internal networks on proxy servers to optimize administrative control over internet usage by company personnel. This eliminates the possibility of opening the door to a data breach by employees accessing unsecured websites, and increases productivity by preventing access to sites such as social media which are inappropriate in the workplace. The proxy server even allows network administrators to control which devices can be used to access vital company data.

Nowhere is a proxy server more essential than for Big Data applications such as web

and web crawling. Enterprises of all sizes from SMBs to corporate retail giants such as

and Walmart use these advanced software applications to remain competitive in the continuously changing global market.

are used to garner important data such as competitors’ pricing, buying trends, customer reviews, and product innovations.

marketing strategies employ advanced SaaS to increase search engine visibility and ranking. Contact information can be collected to develop new sales pipelines developed with precisely targeted consumers who are searching for the exact products and services your company offers.

Advanced software such as Scrape Box, X Rumer, Scrape Jet, and Search Engine Ranker can all be run successfully with the private IP addresses available in the Proxy Rack network. Developers can seamlessly integrate Proxy Rack services using standard HTTP and HTTPS protocols as well as SOCKS4 or SOCKS5 using standard RFC guidelines.

At the time of this writing Proxy Rack had more than 600,00 SOCKS proxies online over the past 24 hours and the number increases continuously as businesses and consumers recognize the enormous advantages of using a proxy server for all internet activity. We are one of the largest private proxy services available to the public and our massive proxy network is still growing.

We provide priority technical support 5 days per week and our proprietary system will replace any dead proxies automatically to keep your internet operations up and running reliably. We have over 40 countries in our extensive proxy network and all unique addresses are private to eliminate any risk of your home IP leaking to the public internet. We offer a 3-day money back guarantee on all of our quality proxy services so new customers can

Proxy Basics 101: What is the Definition of a Proxy Server?

Proxy servers play an important role in cloud infrastructures. They aren’t the kind of proxy most people think of. They don’t

clients from servers, but rather they stand in for servers on the Internet. That’s what is called a “reverse proxy.”

An SaaS setup usually provides more than one application to its users. Often, it makes sense to have specialized servers, each of which handles one or a few of the applications or otherwise divides up the work. Each server category could have its own domain and IP address, but that’s rather confusing to the user. A proxy is a more elegant solution for many cases.

You could think of a reverse proxy as an assistant who takes phone calls and talks to visitors outside the main office. Some of them are routine, and the assistant can handle them without wasting anyone else’s time. Some of them need to get an appointment or be brushed off. The boss in the main office can work more efficiently. A reverse proxy does the same for application servers.

A popular approach is to have a reverse proxy server for the entire service. It stands just behind the firewall. All Internet traffic goes through it, and it figures out where to dispatch each request. It forms part of a cloud distribution network (CDN) architecture, or it can be used in a standalone data center.

A reverse proxy has some similarities to forward

, load balancers, and edge servers, but it’s not the same. More than one of these functions can be combined in the same machine.

A forward proxy is what clients use to connect indirectly to Internet services. It includes local caching proxies as well as anonymizing services. A reverse proxy is a destination. Clients connect to it rather than directly to the machine running the application. They are connected to the proxy, but the functionality they get is from the application server.

A load balancer is simpler than a proxy server. It distributes requests among two or more homogeneous application servers so that each one gets a roughly equal amount of work. A reverse proxy server can include load balancing among its functions, but it also assigns requests to servers that run different applications.

An edge server stands geographically closer to the client than the application server does. It caches data for faster turnaround or passes requests on to the application server if it has to. It may or may not include proxy functionality beyond that.

Assigning requests to servers is the proxy’s basic function. A request’s URL indicates what application it’s intended for. The proxy parses it and determines which application server is able to service it. It can manage sticky sessions, where all requests from a logged-in user go to the same server in a load-balanced group.

Application servers might differ only in details such as the languages they handle. There might be one server for an application’s English-language requests and another for all other languages. The proxy can send requests to the appropriate server based on user preferences or URL parameters.

The server can standardize URLs before sending them to the application server. This includes applying rewriting rules, removing unnecessary parameters, or adding parameters for internal use.

Adding a new application and new hardware to support it is a simple matter. The proxy’s rules just need to be updated so that they dispatch the appropriate requests to it.

IPv4 addresses are scarce. Network address translation (NAT) gets around that problem, but the server is on the network perimeter where it’s vulnerable. A proxy just requires one public IP address, and the application servers don’t need one at all.

A server which is directly reachable over the Internet is constantly under attack. Hostile packets probe it for open ports, application bugs, and other weaknesses. A successful attack lets criminals steal confidential data or modify information. Data breaches that affect customers are very costly.

A reverse proxy keeps application servers off the front lines. It doesn’t hold a large amount of user data, except whatever is in its cache. If the proxy is compromised, the attacker still has to get through to the application servers. Administrators have more time to catch and remedy the problem. Keeping the network perimeter small lets edge protection systems work better. The internal network structure is hidden from potential intruders.

The proxy does application-specific request filtering, beyond what a general-purpose firewall can do. It blocks requests that match malicious URL or cookie patterns. The application server never sees them. It can limit requests from a given user or IP address, protecting against denial-of-service attacks. The term 

 often appears for a proxy that serves this function.

Having a filtering layer which is separate from the application improves flexibility. Administrators can change the rules without touching the backend servers. In addition to blocking malicious requests, the proxy can detect suspicious behavior and issue an alert for further investigation.

The proxy examines outgoing as well as incoming data. It can detect abnormal data being sent from the application server, block them, and alert the administrators. That lets it catch, for example, malware reaching out to a command-and-control server.

Secure connections are necessary for any serious Web services. TLS (often still known by the older name of SSL) requires cryptographic signing and verification. That takes up significant computing time when processing many requests. A proxy can handle all the TLS work, removing the load from the application servers. As long as their connections are physically safe from outside snooping and tampering, they can use unencrypted HTTP. Only one TLS certificate is needed, rather than one for each application.

This advantage applies only if the proxy and application servers are parts of a LAN or a secure MPLS network. If the network is a software-defined WAN, HTTPS connections are necessary for backend connections. Anything that goes over the public Internet needs to be secure. The certificates can be self-signed, since no outside machines should ever access them. Each server can have its own certificate, and they can be replaced as often as necessary.

Keeping TLS software up to date is an important part of network security. Using

to reduce the number of Internet-facing devices makes the task easier.

Authenticating users and checking their authorizations should be a unified task. The application servers shouldn’t have to check logins separately. They should just get trusted information about the user’s identity and privileges.

The proxy server checks the session which a request belongs to. If it isn’t logged in and the request requires an authenticated user, it dispatches the request to the identity management system for logging in. If the user is logged in, the proxy server may be able to check if the user can perform the requested action. If it determines that it isn’t allowed, it sends an error message back. The proxy checks for session timeouts, limiting the risk to people who walk away without logging out.

Invalid login attempts waste an application server’s time, especially if a password-guessing bot is making repeated attempts. The proxy server can field them and limit the number of attempts from any given source. After too many failed attempts, it should lock the source out for a while. The application server doesn’t need to see them.

Compression of responses reduces bandwidth requirements and speeds up response times. This is a standard practice for decreasing the number of bytes sent. It’s not as demanding as encryption, but it does take some processing time. The proxy server handles all compression and decompression, relieving the application servers of one more task.

Some requests need to be redirected to a server in a different location. The proxy server can send redirect responses without touching the application server. It can handle upgrade redirects from HTTP to HTTPS, and it can send responses such as “not found” and “not available” in the appropriate cases.

Server logs are easiest to deal with when they don’t come from too many machines. A proxy server can log all requests for the application servers. This makes it a convenient base for analytics. The proxy can run the analysis itself, though usually, it will give the data to a separate cloud service to turn into statistics and graphs.

Using proxies simplifies network monitoring as well. Monitoring software can see how much traffic is going through the proxy server and what kind of requests are coming in. If unusual traffic patterns start showing up, it’s easier to catch them when there’s no need to combine data from multiple servers. That allows quicker detection of denial-of-service attacks.

A load balancer distributes jobs among multiple servers so that they share the processing burden. It can be a specialized device that does nothing else, or it can be one of a proxy server’s functions.

Some application architectures require all requests in a session to go to the same server, so it can hold session data locally. A proxy server can do this by holding onto session identifiers and dispatching requests appropriately. It may also be able to do smart load balancing. Some types of requests demand more resources than others, and the proxy can take this into

Keeping application servers off the network perimeter makes scaling them easier. There’s no need to add public IP addresses or reconfigure NAT for new machines. The proxy just needs to know about the new servers and have rules about what requests to send to them.

If the network adds a new SaaS category, the changes to the proxy are still fairly simple. It needs to have rules for the new service and for how to dispatch its requests. If it functions as an application firewall, it will need updating so it can protect the service.

A large network may need more than one proxy to keep up with the traffic. In this case, a load balancer can manage multiple proxy servers.

Not every request has to go to the application servers. A request that doesn’t trigger an action may just need to retrieve data that doesn’t change often. The headers in the server’s response indicate whether it can be cached and for how long. Everyone knows about how browsers use this information; a caching server does basically the same thing.

A server can send a purge request to a caching proxy when the content changes sooner than the expiration time. This allows longer expiration times than would otherwise be safe since it’s possible to override them. That’s a feature that isn’t available to browsers.

Some content doesn’t need to be cached at all. It can either be directly available on the proxy server or handled by a server that does nothing but deliver static data. Images, videos, CSS, and JavaScript usually make up the majority of a page’s content. The HTML itself is rarely more than a few kilobytes. There’s no good reason the application server has to be burdened with delivering the parts that don’t change.

The sum and goal of these advantages is a SaaS system which delivers better performance without a huge increase in hardware costs. A proxy is like a skilled assistant who handles routine tasks for the boss. The boss isn’t constantly interrupted and can concentrate on the important work. People get to the inner office only after the assistant has verified that their business is legitimate and needs personal attention.

A proxy server’s work is qualitatively different from the backend server’s. It handles a huge number of requests but performs only simple actions with each one. Most of its work consists of handing off or dismissing requests. Its software is designed to handle many requests in parallel, where each one doesn’t need a lot of resources. A backend server handles fewer transactions, but they typically have heavier requirements for computing or looking up information.

At the same time, putting the application servers behind a proxy makes them more secure. Attacks over the Internet have to go through an extra layer to hit them. The proxies need strong edge protection, but there are fewer of them to protect, and they don’t hold a large amount of valuable information by themselves.

There’s a lot more to learn about the use of

with SaaS, but hopefully this introduction has helped to convince you of their value.

10 Reasons to Use a Proxy Server in an SaaS Business

21st Century enterprises now recognize the power of Big Data to boost profits, develop new sales pipelines, and develop and maintain a competitive edge in today’s highly contested online business environments. In any business, the mantra “time is money” has always been a core fundamental, and this vital rule of thumb hasn’t changed when it applies to the gathering, collating, and analyzing of Big Data for use by the enterprise’s decision-makers.

applications can drive traffic and increase conversions in a way which can level the playing field for startups who no longer need to lay out huge initial capital investments for expensive IT hardware onsite. Established SMBs need to stay current on pricing to maintain their competitive edge and foster robust growth, and it’s not as if there is any choice in the matter.

 and Big Data analytics in today’s digital environment has forced the issue. Any enterprise which chooses not to avail themselves of this critical business information can rest assured that their rivals certainly will, and relying on human resources alone to keep up to speed in the hyper-dynamic Big Data world of internet business is like entering a golf cart in the Grand Prix. You can’t win.

That said, many who recognize the value of Big Data and venture into the

of web scraping will find that the doors to the data they need are not left wide open. Many websites and search engines take sophisticated defensive measures to safeguard the data they contain and identifying a single IP as the source of a torrent of web crawling bots and queries is the first line of defense. The highest levels of anonymity and security are essential for any advanced data scraping operation. In this post, the experts at ProxyRack take a detailed look at just how a backconnect proxy can optimize advanced SaaS and Big Data applications with unsurpassed levels of anonymity while enhancing the power of advanced Big Data software with the sheer power of numbers.

Businesses today have at their disposal armies of automated information gathering bots thanks to advanced SaaS, all primed and ready to crawl the web and root out the most pertinent business data such as competitors’ pricing, customer preferences, and market trends. Today’s Big Data applications search and acquire precisely targeted consumer contact information that can make the “cold” sales lead an anachronism of the past. If your niche business manufactures pink 3-legged stools, web scraping can find the exact consumers who are looking for and purchasing pink 3-legged stools. Big Data applications can show you what your competitors are charging for their version of the products, online reviews from consumers, seasonal market trends, and the leading geo-locations for developing the most lucrative sales pipelines.

Of course, the websites being scraped are aware of the value of their information as well and take defensive measures to block it, and identifying the IP which is the source of queries plays a key role in that defense. Game on. It’s a case of go with a proxy or go home. But as we’ll find, for advanced Big Data applications, all

Web scraping applications have become irreplaceable tools for accomplishing the ambitious business tasks we discussed above, but there are limitations which are too frequently discovered the hard way soon after the data collecting bot army has already been deployed to the information battlefield. A single residential proxy does a fine job of masking the user’s IP address and preserving anonymity, but defensive measures at the target websites and search engines can still block access simply based on the sheer number or type of queries coming from the IP of that particular proxy over time.

Getting your IP address blocked is one of the most common obstacles faced in data scraping operations, and the banning may not occur until hours into the process when the data stream is lost not to mention the loss of precious business hours invested. Applications can’t function with incomplete data, and there are various red flags which can trigger an IP ban including:

A residential proxy is comprised of a single unit which acts as the middleman, forwarding and retrieving data with different referrers and headers. They are very beneficial for preserving anonymity and security for casual browsing but they are not the optimal tool for advanced web scraping applications. Data is sent from point A to point B, and every outgoing connection comes out as point B. This is where the rotating residential proxy plays a role.

Adding more residential proxies, say B, C, and D which rotate as the IP source, still leaves a definable footprint which is easily recognized as website accesses continue to go through a discernable B, C, D rotation. This can cause a search engine to automatically require a “

” signature for all actions or trigger a ban on the IP, bringing the web scraping process to a grinding halt.

The rotating pool of a small number of available residential IPs is only a partial solution. As we’ll see, the backconnect proxy takes the rotating IP concept a giant step farther. If we think of the Big Data stream as analogous to water flow, the residential proxy is the average garden hose (prone to kinks) while the backconnect proxy is the powerful and far more reliable firehose, built for full stream high-pressure performance.

Backconnect Proxy Advantages For Big Data Applications

The backconnect proxy is the rotating residential IP concept on steroids. Backconnect proxies are much more than the residential proxy unit accessing and forwarding data by rotating the IP with a limited and easily detectable number of addresses. Backconnect proxies are configured specifically to serve the demanding requirements of Big Data applications, comprised of a multitude of different machines and configurations linked together in a private network. From 50 to 500,000 proxies can all be linked together to form the single gateway known as the backconnect proxy.

Obviously, that multitude of IPs is the key advantage here. Rather than limiting the query sources to B, C, and D, websites and search engines see queries originating from a multitude of individual and separately geo-located points provided by the backconnect proxy network. Every connection is made from a different IP address, accessing the website from a unique connection point to keep data flowing without triggering red flag actions from the website. The only limitation to the power of the backconnect proxy is the number of accessible IP addresses available from the proxy provider.

At ProxyRack we can provide access to upwards of 1,250,000 IP addresses in 40 different countries including the US, UK, Australia, Russia, and Europe. For now. We are still continually growing our IP structure to allow for dynamic scaling of HTTP and SOCKS requests. While standard residential proxies do provide a good level of anonymity for the average browser, the backconnect proxy provides advantages for advanced users including:

Generally, the power of the multitude of rotating IPs networked together in a backconnect proxy allows a greater number of requests per minute. This eliminates the delays between requests which can occur with a standard proxy server. From the perspective that you can collect more data in a shorter time with a single command, the speed of the backconnect proxy is a significant advantage for Big Data applications.

That said, there is the other element of speed to be considered, that of broadband connections. All of the advantages of the multitude of residential IPs available in the backconnect proxy outweigh the inherent fluctuations in broadband speed which can occur with the varying quality of the proxies in the residential IP pool. Some connections may be lightning fast while others tend to be slower due to variations in normal broadband connections in different locations around the world. To minimize these speed fluctuations it’s important to choose an industry-leading provider such as ProxyRack which has an enormous pool of high-quality residential proxies available to optimize performance in the backconnect proxy rotation.

Any business conducting advanced online operations can benefit from the power provided by the backconnect proxy. These include:

These advanced applications are rarely “one and done” operations. Even the most advanced Big Data software is useless when your IP has been banned. Effective

programs require continuous deployment and monitoring to ensure SERP ranking is maintained. Web scraping and data mining bots must have reliable access in order to keep you abreast of changing business environments and Whois requests to develop pertinent contact information are all ongoing processes requiring repetitive access to the relevant sources on the web. The backconnect proxy can take anonymity, security, and scalability to unsurpassed levels to ensure that your data is available in a predictably consistent stream whenever you need it.

Most traditional proxy services allow you to purchase just a limited number of proxies, perhaps up to just 25, and they won’t change until the end of the month. That could be a severe handicap for Big Data operations conducted on an ongoing daily basis. At Proxy Rack we’ve set ourselves apart from traditional proxy services by accommodating the Big Data demands of today’s business applications by offering access to 100,000 unique IP addresses daily, and more than 1,250,000 unique monthly IP addresses. That means you spend your time collecting and analyzing your Big Data to boost profits and grow your business, rather than working around the delays caused by incomplete or inaccessible data from a blocked or banned IP.

Our multifunction rotating ports assign a new random unique IP on every connection or thread your software uses. You can also use the 10-minute rotating port to complete a sequence of requests from the same IP address. We don’t use any public proxies whatsoever, all IP addresses are exclusively private to ensure that your true IP address is never leaked. All of our plans include access to all of our available unique IP addresses, and we support HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS protocols that work with all existing software. You can choose from 50 simultaneous connections with our Standard Plan, 100 connections with the Elite Plan, and the ultimate 200 connections available with our Guru Plan. All

three of our rotating residential IP plans

include unmetered bandwidth and are backed by a 3-day money back guarantee.

If your business is ready to embrace the benefits of Big Data you’ll need the advantages that one of the largest private proxy services available to the public can provide, and getting started is just a click away. 

The Backconnect Proxy: Empowering Big Data For Big Profits

Web Scraping in the 21st Century Business Environment

Call it web scraping, data scraping, data extraction, screen scraping, web harvesting, or more generally DaaS (Data as a Service). By any name, Big Data has become a fundamental business tool in the 21st Century global business environment and collecting and analyzing that data is crucial for any business which finds itself in a highly competitive market. In this post, the techno-wizards at Proxy Rack explore the important role of web scraping in specific business applications across a broad range of industries.

We’inkedinl define exactly what web scraping is and how businesses like yours can use it to boost profits, foster robust growth, and streamline Big Data processes. We’ll explain why web scraping is an essential business tool, and how it is accessible for enterprises of all sizes in a variety of markets and industries.

Web Scraping Defined: The Secret Weapon of Fortune 500 Companies

 is the general term for the various automated methods applied for collecting information from the internet. To be effective, this is accomplished by software which simulates human web browsing, or web surfing, to collect information from websites. In the old school business environment, the value of knowing your competitor and keeping up to speed with supply and demand variables and other changing market conditions for any enterprise are well-established business fundamentals.

The value of business data is nothing new, but the demands on any business relying on internet marketing and data go far beyond the limited human capacity to collect that information from thousands of relevant websites, and that’s where the automated web scraping technique comes in. Web

“bots” comprise an automated workforce which is able to go about the assigned data collection tasks on a relentless 24/7/365 routine when required.

Businesses extract information from a website for a number of reasons, two of the most common being to grow the business by establishing a sales pipeline and to discover where competitors are setting their prices. 

 describes how web scraping is used as a growth hack by setting up a common robot.txt file which tells a web crawler what to look for on a web page. In Medal’s example, a

reseller assigns a bot to browse for the terms “Jordan” and “Air Jordan” at popular competing retail sites such as eBay and StockX. In this way, the reseller is able to access the aggregate prices charged by the competition and use that information as a competitive edge.

Of course, the reseller’s competitors are using the same essential web

techniques themselves, which leads us to the web scraping measures/countermeasures scenario reminiscent of the old “Spy vs. Spy” comics.

As data security consultant and user acquisition expert Eran Halevy notes in his own 

, web scraping has quickly developed into an unavoidable online arms race for the internet marketing sector. His article describes the web scraping slug out between retail giants Amazon and Walmart.

made industry news in 2017 by successfully blocking Walmart’s digital army of bots from web scraping Amazon’s listings “several million times a day”. This online cold war spawned a whole new sector of third-party service providers who specialize in identifying and blocking web scraping by competitors. That’s how valuable the data is.

/Walmart skirmish also highlights an important reality for enterprises at all levels concerning web scraping. If you’re not doing it yet, you can safely bet that your competitors are, which may explain your enterprise’s otherwise mysteriously diminishing returns. The CEO of NY wholesaler 

 explained his reasons for scraping his competitors’ sites every 20 minutes saying, “If we’re not decently priced, we’ll see it almost immediately in sales declines.”

Retail price competition is just one rather obvious aspect of the business value of Big Data. Now let’s look at some other rather surprising and creative ways businesses can profit from the Big Data collected by web scraping.

Development: Web Scraping and the Beauty Industry

The Beauty Industry is a $445 billion dollar industry 

 by HuffPost’s style and beauty reporter Julia Brucculieri, with the average American woman spending up to $300,000 just on face products in her lifetime. To date, most “big beauty” brands aren’t selling products tailored to fit the needs of individual consumers, but companies such as 

are changing that “one-size-fits-all” mentality with advanced web scraping combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.

and their tailored product development strategy

was 2 years in the making. The data was compiled by web scraping more than 8 million consumer reviews about 100,000 skin care products. Bots also scanned for data on 20,000 beauty ingredients while glomming through 4,000 scientific articles about skin and ingredient details. Specific keywords such as “acne” or “wrinkles” are connected to product reviews and ratings using machine learning. In this way, products can be tailored to use the ingredients proven as most successful for various skin conditions.

Consumers contribute to the success of their personal skin care products by taking a short dermatology survey to determine age, skin type, skin goals, ethnicity, and geographic location. Calculations are made using the web scraped data to develop a unique skin profile and a customized skin care regimen tailored to each customer’s specific needs. The massive web scraped database also lets 

avoid ingredients which are not a good fit with certain skin types and could actually cause harm.

Web Scraping to Predict Crowdfunding Success at Kickstarter

Tristan Dresbach of the NYC Data Science Academy

 came up with a creative use for web scraping when he asked the question “What characteristics maximize the probability of a successful 

 Campaign?” The popular crowdfunding platform 

 has drawn nearly 4 billion in US dollars pledged for business start-up campaigns.

The crowdfunding platform provides an exciting alternative to traditional start-up funding sources such as small business loans, finding an angel, or risking your own hard-earned cash. The percentage for a successful, fully funded campaign as of October 2018 at 

 is a daunting 36.4%, with a 63.6% failure rate 

(Donations are returned to the donors in any failed 

 campaign, those which do not achieve full funding.)

Dresbach decided to use web scraping to analyze the winning 36% to identify the key characteristics of successful campaigns. He created a script to extract 20+ variables including city, state, number of updates, reward levels, campaign duration, category, and creator to name just a few. Dresbach was able to determine important parameters for success at 

Dresbach has just “scraped the surface” of this project and plans to expand to 200 sub-categories to more precisely predict the best ways to create a start-up project, set the minimum funding goal, set reward levels, and choose a deadline for successful funding campaigns at 

Web Scraping For Recruiters and Employment Seekers

Big Data and analytics are enhancing recruiting and talent management in the human resources sector of industries across the board. Companies can 

 using web scraping to locate and attract the best-qualified candidates for the positions they have available. They no longer need to rely on the intuition and limited resources of individual human recruiters when it’s time to build the dream teams that will attract investors and inspire customer or

Web scraping allows recruiters to expand the search for precisely qualified talent beyond the usual resume sources at

or Indeed. Though these massive employment sites contribute a significant amount of hiring data to the recruiting process, web scraping can expand the search to social media and industry websites to aggregate data which enhances hiring with decisions based on facts and eliminates much of the risk and guesswork that is inherent in traditional hiring. In the IT field, for example, web scraping can be used to grade programmer candidates based on their coding abilities and the track record of actual programming contributions they have made online.

Of course, from the job seeker’s side, web scraping can also be useful, as self-described “aspiring data scientist” Michael Salmon explains in his article 

“Web Scraping Job Postings from Indeed”.

 Salmon describes his method as working smarter, not harder when parsing massive amounts of job listings at Indeed, which by the way also uses web scraping to compile it’s huge aggregated job lists.

Generating Quality Sales Leads With Web Scraping

” reveals what is probably the most well-known and widely applied application of web scraping. What enterprise could resist the potential to generate 10,000 leads in

? Andrew Fogg, Chief Data Officer and co-founder of 

. explains how to use web scraping to generate sales leads “in masse” in his

Web scraping provides a much higher quality of leads than the old technique of buying databases full of phone numbers and email addresses. The quantity is there, but without important “inside information” about the names in the data it’s impossible to sift out the hot prospects from the cold. Web scraping can be used to change all that.

As Fogg explains, quantity and quality are both enhanced when web-based data is the source tapped using a simple 3-step procedure:

The ideal user defined in step 1 is the key to quality leads. The web scraping tools can filter through the massive amounts of bulk information on the internet, extracting only the specific and relevant data using a set of your company’s pre-defined parameters.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Web Scraping

Ranking on the almighty SERP, or Search Engine Result Pages, is fundamental to success in today’s competitive business environment, and SEO plays a key role in the online marketing world. Online reviews carry more authority with consumers today than a word-of-mouth recommendation from someone they know personally. SERP ranking is significantly affected by the website’s authority as assessed by the almighty Google search engine algorithms which take into

the number of backlinks to a site, the relevance of keywords users are searching, and the queries, or “long-tailed keywords” which are answered by informative content at the site.

software suites in the digital marketing field is ScrapeBox. Web scraping functions allow users to:

As we mentioned above, web scraping is a highly effective technique to gain a competitive edge over rival enterprises. That means that you’ll want to keep your web scraping programs confidential, and that means you need a reliable proxy service to mask your machine’s IP address. Our proxies work with any kind of software which supports HTTP or SOCKS. We’ve tested our proxies and they operate well in support of:

ProxyRack serves more than 50,000,000 page requests and powers some of the largest data mining companies on the web, in data mining operations spanning 3 continents. When you’re ready to give your enterprise the Big Data competitive edge that web scraping provides, don’t hesitate to contact us for the

services and technology which support Big Data extraction performance.

Web Scraping, Big Data, and How Successful Businesses Use Them

All the benefits of using a proxy server…for free? We’ll forgive you for thinking this sounds like a sweet deal, but just press pause before jumping head-first into the world of free proxies.

Sure, free proxies may be appealing, but there could be severe implications to using a free version of a proxy server.

To highlight the risks of using free proxies and help you decide if they’re worth your time, we put together this guide. We’ll walk you through the different types of free proxies and explain the risks of each so you can make an informed judgment call about whether the pros of a freebie outweigh the cons of unsecured browsing.

A proxy server is a computer network that lets users piggyback on the internet. People can use Proxy servers for many reasons, like masking their location to stream TV shows only available in another country. Proxies can keep your identity private and secure, too.

You may also choose to use paid and free servers for these reasons: 

 protocol and can handle any traffic. Some are specific to one TCP protocol, usually HTTP. Some services are web-based, meaning you don’t need to configure any settings for your browser. You go to a proxy website and give it a URL to access.

 you use, its performance, reliability, and honesty are major factors to consider. A slow proxy One with slow throughput and is often down isn’t worth a lot. One which intercepts or falsifies data can be a liability. If it delivers malware, that’s even worse.

What are the Different Types of Free Proxies?

Not all free proxies provide the same level of security and anonymity. There are three categories of proxies that differ in terms of how well they hide your sensitive data. These are: 

This type of proxy forwards your IP address information to the destination but makes no attempt to keep your information private. As the name suggests, these proxies cache data - reducing access to destination servers. Caching proxies typically live in private networks, so you aren’t likely to find a free, public proxy service. 

These proxy services attempt to make your activity on the internet untraceable. This essentially means that the proxy is still conveying requests like you usually would when using the internet, but it’s not revealing where the requests are coming from. Most free proxy providers are anonymous proxies. 

Some destination servers will attempt to block proxies; however, elite proxy servers have a better chance of getting through. Despite their increased chances of getting past blocks, elite proxy traffic patterns can still reveal that a proxy is in use. 

Although it’s easy to let the idea of free versions of a product or service entice us into signing on the dotted line, the lure of saving money can often mask the risks underneath. Let’s take a look at the different ways in which free proxies can wreak havoc on your ability to browse the web, protect your online identity and avoid malware.

1. Most Free Proxy Servers Don’t Use HTTPS

You might think little of the standard HTTP or HTTPS that precedes the web address you want to visit, but the difference between them is vast, especially regarding security. 

, who analyzed over 25,000 proxies, only 21% of free proxy servers allow an HTTPS connection - meaning your connection to the server is not encrypted. So, even if you think you’re anonymously using the internet, someone may actually be keeping track of the messages you send and harvesting sensitive information about you. 

2. Free Proxies Could Monitor Your Connection

Not following HTTPS protocol may also mean fraudsters or hackers can monitor your traffic and online activity. There is a worrying number of stories detailing when online fraudsters have set up a free 

 to track a user’s activity, steal login details or even commit identity theft. 

Websites need security certificates, like SSL/TSL accreditation, to be allowed to use HTTPS support, which costs money. So, before you use a free proxy (or any proxy services), check whether HTTP or HTTPS prefixes the URL. 

While some proxy hosts offer free services to help people out, most free proxy servers use the system to make money. 

One of the ways proxy hosts can make money is by placing ads into content. Third parties can populate proxy sites with malware-ridden advertisements that attempt to trick users into clicking them. This is known as malvertising, which typically takes the form of competition wins, i.e. ‘Congrats! You are the one-millionth visitor. Click to claim your prize.’ 

4. Free Proxies Could Allow Hackers to Steal Your Cookies

At first glance, this may not seem like a big deal. After all, how many times a day do we click ‘accept all’ when presented with a cookie message? 

The problem with cookie theft is the amount of data someone can access. Saved login data and personal information can all be stored in your cookies, which could leave you open to data breaches, identity theft, and more. 

Ever heard the phrase, “You get what you pay for”? Well, in the case of free proxy servers, this much is 

 true. Even if unwanted parties aren’t trying to steal cookies and your sensitive information, the proxy service could be frustratingly slow. 

It takes money and time to keep proxy services safe and performing correctly, investments that free proxies won’t get. Additionally, if large amounts of web traffic are using the service, this can affect performance and increase how long it takes you to make a data request.