Utilizing proxies or a proxy server would bring users lots of benefits. For those that aren’t familiar with it, a proxy server is a machine that will handle all of your data traffic and act as a middleman between your device and the internet. All of your requests will be routed through a proxy server so your IP address will be completely hidden. In this article, we’ll be discussing 10 useful tasks you can do with it.

1. Secure your personal information.

By utilizing a different IP address, proxies will help secure your privacy by redirecting hackers or people with malicious intent to an IP address that isn’t your own. Similar to a VPN, proxies are especially helpful if you constantly use public Wi-Fi to access the internet but it still can be useful even when using your home network as your computer’s firewall is sometimes not enough.

2. Access shows on Netflix or Hulu.

Some shows on Netflix or Hulu are geo-restricted due to copyright restrictions. This means that a show you want to watch on Netflix may not be available on your country but it’s available on other countries. You can use proxies to change your location to a country where that show is available so you can now watch it.

3. Bypass website blocks.

When your IP address has been blocked by a website, you’re prevented from being able to access that website again. A proxy will enable you to bypass this block because you are using a different IP address from the IP address that was blocked. Through proxies, you have access to a pool of millions of IP addresses and you can utilize it all in case you get blocked multiple times. Proxies are even useful if you want to circumvent content filters or censorships.

4. Block ads.

A proxy can remove all the ads you might get because it blocks cookies and breadcrumbs that give information about all of your internet activities. Your internet activities will not be tracked which results in no ads targeting you. You can even block all the untargeted ads on websites through a proxy.

5. Place restrictions on networks.

If you have a company office and you don’t want your employees to waste precious time on websites or visit harmful websites, you can use a proxy to block any unsecure or inappropriate websites. You can even choose which particular devices have access to the network. Proxies can help you increase your employee’s productivity and avoid potential data breaches from accidentally downloading viruses. It can even help you compress your network’s traffic and save you on bandwidth.

6. Stop Malware.

As previously mentioned, proxies can help you stop malware by blocking unsecure websites but it can also effectively stop malware by preventing it from going back to your device because malware or spyware aren’t able to get through proxies. Comparable to antivirus software, proxies will help in preventing virus infections from affecting your systems but you still do need to be careful as there are still a lot of ways for mistakes to happen.

7. Avoid bans when utilizing automation tools.

When using automation tools for advanced tasks like web scraping on a website, there’s a good chance that your account and IP address will be banned by that website. Websites don’t like automation tools being used on their site because it puts a lot of load on their servers and they have various systems in place to detect and ban its usage. A proxy server will help you avoid all those bans by quickly rotating through multiple IP addresses before a ban gets issued.

8. Create multiple social media accounts.

Social media accounts have limitations to the number of accounts an individual IP address can create. This limit would vary from website to website but if you do go above that limit, then all your surplus accounts will get banned. A proxy will enable you to create as many social media accounts as you want because you will have access to millions of IP addresses. You simply have to switch to another IP address each time you create a new account.

9. Shop internationally.

If you have a product that you want to buy but it’s only available in a different country or the website where you can buy the product restricts its users to a certain location, then you can use a proxy to change your location to that specific country and purchase that product. Although you still have to figure out how to ship that product directly to your location. This also applies when there’s a region specific discount or promo and you want to access it.

10. Increase internet speed.

A proxy will enable you to connect to a proxy server that’s physically close to a website’s web server, which would increase your internet speed. This is especially helpful when playing games as you can enjoy a low in-game latency due to the proxy server being close to the game servers. Proxies will even cache web pages for you and other users, which frees up bandwidth and improves load times.

Conclusion

Whether it be for personal or business reasons, there are many helpful use cases for proxies and the ten that we discussed cover only some of the functionalities a proxy server can bring. There are even many types of proxy servers, like residential proxies or data center proxies, that you can use based on what you need to use it for. It’s not recommended to use free proxies or public proxies too, as they are often unreliable. With a proxy from a reliable proxy provider, you will be able to increase your overall online experience.

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