What is Public Proxy, How Do They Work? | Scrape.do

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Internet is an endless area. In your daily life on the internet, you use a very tiny bubble of such an ocean. For instance, you send cat videos to the people you love or flirt with strangers online. These are the tip of the iceberg. What is going on behind the scene is a whole other story. Very simply, requests go, and information comes. And, most of you are probably using a public proxy service at your campus,  office, or even on a bus, without even realizing it. Public proxy services are devices, and they are here for transferring and directing traffics between protocols and networks. Public proxies are very functional services ranging from various areas, but especially in web scraping tools. Public proxy service is the perfect match for web scraping and data extraction tools. Because public proxies allow web scraping tools to scan and extract data more freely and faster on the web. Without a public proxy service, the range of web scraping tools would be more limited as most of the websites has local restrictions.

What Is Public Proxy Service? – How Can I Get A Public Proxy

Public proxies are instant bridges builders between the web and online users. As it tunnels users to the websites, public proxies are also known as “intercessors.”

Devices that are connected to the internet have a unique address called the IP address. Public proxy servers also have their own IP addresses. It combines online digital devices with web pages. Your mobile phone, for example, has both of these addresses. As you surf through the web, you keep sending entrance requests to the URLs by simply clicking on them. The entire process is tunneled to the proxy. When the response arrives at the public proxy server, the server takes the data from the web page and sends these pieces of information to your online device.

How Can I Have A Public Proxy?

Public proxy servers could be divided into two, namely software public proxies and hardware public proxies. A hardware public proxy is located in the middle of the internet and online device’s own network. This is the bridge where the core function is going on, obtaining, sending, and directing the data provided by the web pages.

If it is a software public proxy, on the other hand, it is located on a cloud server. After you download the app on your online device, software public proxy does basically the same thing with a hardware public proxy.

Services of both proxies could be obtained by a monthly or annual subscription method. From time to time, service providers may also offer a free month. Or, some of these services are entirely free, yet, of course, these public proxies have some disadvantages compared to the paid ones. Public proxies are free services. They let users enter their IP addresses and keep their anonymity throughout the web.  Generally, free types provide users with fewer amount of URLs and can be run on a limited number of digital devices. On the other hand, paid versions of proxies barely have limitations when surfing online.

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What Are The Advantages Of Public Proxy Servers

Proxy servers have various advantages ranging from empowered security and anonymity to avoiding area-specific limitations. Smart businesses use these benefits to be one step ahead of their rival firms.

Surf With Anonymity

If you are using a public proxy service, it will provide you with its own IP address as you travel around the web. So, when the websites try to log your data to their database, they fail to do so. Because your actual IP address is hidden by the proxy’s IP address.

Why is it important? Well, your device’s own IP address can tell much information about the user. If your IP address is revealed, this means which city you are in, its area code, ZIP code, the name of your ISP, and the code of your ISP are also revealed. A leak on a website such as Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter, where users generally do not have local restrictions, so they often do not use public proxy servers, would reveal your and others’ IP addresses to the hackers.

Avoid Location-Specific Restrictions

Due to the copyright laws and governmental regulations, a considerable amount of the internet is geo-blocked. This means if you connect to the internet at location X, you wouldn’t be able to connect some of the web pages that are banned by location X.

However, as public proxies hide your real IP address, web pages cannot see your real location. So, there won’t be any restrictions based on your location’s regulations while using a public proxy service.

Moreover, public proxies are also able to avoid connection limitations of a local network of a workplace, a bus station, or a dormitory, etc.

Protection Against Malware

Public proxy servers can ban users from entering risky web pages that might contain malware. Most of the daily users of the internet do not have a list of potentially dangerous websites that might hurt their devices. Public proxies often have the data of which websites could have risky phishing links, so proxies could prevent users from accessing these websites in the first place before the harm is done.

What Is the Importance Of Public Proxy Service For Web Scraping?

Think about Superman and the kryptonite duo. Superman has the ability to fly, send laser from his eyes, and has a superpower. However, when being exposed to kryptonite, Superman cannot fly, cannot send laser, and doesn’t have the superpower anymore.  Think as Superman is a web scraping tool, and the kryptonite is website restrictions. The same situation applies to web scraping and internet restrictions. Web scraping is a tool that filters and scans websites and extracts data from their HTML codes. Yet being exposed to network limitations, web scraper tools lose most of their powers. This is the scene where public proxies enter the stage and save the day. Public proxies are the anti-kryptonite, blocking the negative side-effects of network cutbacks on web scraping tools.

If you want an efficient and successful web scraping experience, you should know that you need a proxy server for the best experience. Proxies are mandatory for web scraping projects.

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What Are The Main Reasons For To Use A Local Proxy While Web Scraping

Followings are the prominent reasons why it is crucial to have a public proxy for web scraping:

• With a public proxy, you can extract data from the web pages in a more well-grounded way. Thanks to its IP address tricks, it weakens the risk of getting banned from specific websites.
• A public proxy allows you to have more than one IP address. This is great as now you can send multiple requests to the specified web page. Since you are using more than one IP address, websites wouldn’t realize what is going on, which lowers the chance of getting blocked.
• As you send a request to enter a website, websites first check your IP address to see whether you are in the restricted country or not. Thanks to local proxies, you can access the network of Memphis, USA, even though you are in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Hence, it eliminates all the geographical limitations. Now it is more logical and efficient to use a web scraping tool.
• Many websites ban IP addresses when an address sends a request from a VPS (virtual private server) from services of some websites such as Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, and Vultr, etc. With a proper public proxy, you can also avoid such kind restrictions.

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Are Proxy Servers Illegal?

Yes, proxy servers are legal. Most internet users use public proxies for many reasons, such as to defend their software and hardware from malware and trojans, to share and watch live streams abroad, to work for freelance jobs and tasks remotely, to gather communities around from various countries.

However, you should notice that some applications are illegal. Most of the unlawful situations are related to copyrights issues. Some movies, series, shows, and kinds of music might be licensed content, and users must pay a fee. Using public proxies to access this kind of content is illegal. We, scrape.do experts, advice our users to do a little research about targeted web page’s copyright terms and conditions.

What Is Proxy Server Error?

It occurs when a user is not able to enter a target web page or link due to the limitation that is set by the admin of the website. This kind of restriction is often here to protect privately produced content.

Why Would A Proxy Server Do Not Respond?

Sometimes, you may encounter with not responding error. The main reason behind this error is a browser extension that contains malicious software and PUPs. Because this malware could change and reset the settings of your web browser.

Here at scrape.do, we provide the best web scraping tool, just for you to crawl safe and soundly across the web with your public proxies.