All You Need to Know about Mobile Proxies: How They Work & How to Use Them

Jovana Gojkovic 08 Jul 2020 5 min read

Proxies are not new to us: We use them for personal and business needs. But the term “mobile proxy” is quite new. Therefore, not many internet users understand the specifics and use cases of this type of proxies. Let’s clarify all the details and see how you can utilize mobile proxies.

What is a mobile proxy?

It’s rather obvious that mobile proxies have something to do with mobile devices. And if it was your gut feeling about this technology, you’re totally correct. A mobile proxy is a portable device — for example, a smartphone or a tablet — that has access to the internet via mobile data. You can connect to such proxies to mask your real IP address with the device's one.

The network of mobile proxies consists of real 3G or 4G connections that are assigned to certain portable gadgets by a mobile operator. Moreover, the devices that are a part of Infatica’s network of mobile proxies are not some idle gadgets — those are smartphones and tablets used by real people.

Thus, mobile proxies are always authentic. They will provide you with real IP addresses and make you undetectable since you’ll appear as a resident of a country you’ve chosen to connect to.

Why do you need mobile proxies?

Have you ever encountered a CAPTCHA trying to access Google while your device is connected to the mobile network? It happened because you get a new IP address each time you connect to the 3G or 4G network. Once you connect to the internet using your portable device, you get a new IP address. And once you disconnect from the network, your IP returns to the base of all the addresses and gets assigned to the next user.

If the previous user who had your current IP was doing something suspicious online, Google would flag this address. Then the next time someone using it will want to search for something, Google will make them go through the CAPTCHA.

A mobile proxy will help you avoid this predicament since it will mask your real current IP address with another one that is clean and is not flagged as suspicious by Google. And if you want to ensure that you will never encounter CAPTCHA or get any issues because of the mobile IP you have, you can stick to individual mobile proxies. Exclusive proxies will belong solely to you, and you will be the only person using them.

Mobile proxies for managing multiple social media accounts

If you're a social media manager, you'll definitely find mobile proxies useful. As you log out of one account and log into another, your IP address remains the same if you’re connected directly to your mobile or wireless network. It will create problems for you because social media platforms are trying to stop users from creating multiple accounts.

That’s why fake profiles you’re using for social media marketing will most likely get blocked if you’re logging into them with the same IP address. It will indicate that these accounts belong to the same person, and social media platform will ban them.

But if you use proxies, you will avoid this situation. Since the IP addresses will change along with accounts, the system of the social media you use will not find your activity suspicious. Therefore, you will not get any issues. It is especially important if you work with accounts of your clients - you don’t want them to get banned because of you.

Just follow one simple rule — stick to the same country for one profile. It’s weird if the same account logs in from the US in the morning, from Australia in the afternoon, and from Europe in the evening. This will also give social media platforms a hint that something is off with this profile.

Also, you can use mobile proxies for social media marketing to avoid ad fraud: You'll be able to confirm that you’ve targeted ads properly and to check what ads your competitors are posting. To do that, simply connect to a proxy from a country you need, and the social media platform will display you the content meant for this audience.

What about free mobile proxies?

It won’t be very hard for you to find mobile proxies offered for free. But we advise you to avoid them because they won’t help you with your needs.

It’s quite hard to create a mobile proxy network. A provider needs to acquire the devices somehow, make sure they remain within a network, and set up the system so that a gadget is used as a proxy only when it’s connected to mobile data. That’s quite a lot of work.

We at Infatica acquire mobile proxies through via our proprietary software development kit— a network of app developers that have agreed to offer their users an opportunity to become one of our peers. When a user installs an app that is a part of Infatica’s SDK, they’re offered to make their device a part of Infatica’s proxy network.

If this user agrees to this offer, they will get certain benefits — for example, free premium features or an ad-free app — and a developer receives a commission from us. Users can enter and leave our proxy network whenever they like. And while they’re our peers, we’re using their devices only when they’re idle and currently have sufficient battery power or charging. Therefore, a user will not experience any issues being our peer.

Besides the acquisition of proxies, we also manage them properly to make sure our customers always have the number of IPs they need, and the system works properly. That’s quite a lot of work as well.

As you can see, high-quality mobile proxies simply can’t be free: Chances are, providers of free proxies aren't ethical. If you encounter such a service without any charge, there is something wrong with it. Maybe most IP addresses of such a provider are already blocked. Or, perhaps, these are not really mobile proxies but some cheap datacenter ones. Either way, you simply can’t get quality service for free.

Infatica’s mobile proxies are quite affordable, and we offer several pricing plans for you to choose the number of IPs you need without paying too much. We can also create a tailored plan for you — just contact us and tell us about your needs.

The bottom line

Nowadays, over half of the users browse the Internet from their mobile devices. And this trend is not going anywhere. We are already using smartphones and tablets for virtually anything. So why would we go back to laptops and computers as our primary devices?

Obviously, the more people will use their mobile gadgets, the more issues will arise. Thus, there will be more cases of using mobile proxies. That’s why you need to master them before your competitors do it faster.