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Okay ladies, gather round for group time…. Grab your juice boxes and graham crackers, cause today, I wanna talk about proxies…. What a proxy server is and isn’t, what they are for, and when and when not to use one.
First, a proxy server is just that - something that is between you and a target service, system, or other tool. There are several types of proxy setups, and which one to use (if at all) and for what purpose for what end result is confusing for a lot of you.
Proxies can be split into a couple of high level categories as follows:
Part I - Categories
Static
Static proxies are bound to specific, persistent IP address and port combinations on the proxy’s forward-facing side. The mapping between the proxy endpoint (IP
ort) and the actual egress IP remains consistent for the duration of its availability or assigned lease period. This is a 1:1 or 1:N static mapping, where each port typically corresponds to a fixed egress IP address.
Often, these static ports are assigned from a pool of available egress IPs. While the mapping is fixed for each user or connection, the overall pool may serve multiple clients using port-based differentiation. Despite appearing static to the user, traffic may be load-distributed internally, but each assigned endpoint always exits through the same IP — hence "static."
Dynamic/Rotating
Dynamic proxies (also called rotating, session, or backconnect proxies) do not maintain a static IPort mapping. Instead, the proxy accepts incoming traffic at a shared gateway IP and port, and routes each connection through a dynamically assigned IP from a pool.
This assignment may be:
Part II - Use Cases
Location-Based
Anonymity Level
By Protocol
Part III - What The Fuck Does All Of This Mean?
First, a proxy server is just that - something that is between you and a target service, system, or other tool. There are several types of proxy setups, and which one to use (if at all) and for what purpose for what end result is confusing for a lot of you.
Proxies can be split into a couple of high level categories as follows:
Part I - Categories
Static
Static proxies are bound to specific, persistent IP address and port combinations on the proxy’s forward-facing side. The mapping between the proxy endpoint (IP
ort) and the actual egress IP remains consistent for the duration of its availability or assigned lease period. This is a 1:1 or 1:N static mapping, where each port typically corresponds to a fixed egress IP address.Often, these static ports are assigned from a pool of available egress IPs. While the mapping is fixed for each user or connection, the overall pool may serve multiple clients using port-based differentiation. Despite appearing static to the user, traffic may be load-distributed internally, but each assigned endpoint always exits through the same IP — hence "static."
Dynamic/Rotating
Dynamic proxies (also called rotating, session, or backconnect proxies) do not maintain a static IP
ort mapping. Instead, the proxy accepts incoming traffic at a shared gateway IP and port, and routes each connection through a dynamically assigned IP from a pool.This assignment may be:
- Per-request (rotates each HTTP request),
- Per-session (rotates after a set duration or until idle),
- Or sticky (binds to a session key or auth token).
Part II - Use Cases
Location-Based
- Global
- Lets you select or access IPs from many countries or regions.
- Used for global market research, geo-unblocking, etc.
- Opposite of a localized proxy (locked to one region).
- Regional/Targeted
- Tied to specific locations like US-only, Germany, or even city-level targeting.
Anonymity Level
- Transparent
- Reveals your real IP and that you’re using a proxy.
- Used mostly in caching/content filtering, not privacy.
- Anonymous/Anonymizing
- Hides your real IP, but identifies itself as a proxy.
- Residential
- Routes traffic through actual consumer devices on home ISP networks, often via software SDKs (in free apps or browser extensions), leased access, or sometimes via malware or RATs.
- Because traffic originates from legitimate residential IPs, it bypasses most geo-fencing and anti-bot systems that rely on IP classification.
- Highly effective for avoiding IP-based detection in e-commerce, banking, and social media automation or fraud.\
- Datacenter
- Operates through servers in data centers or cloud providers(AWS, OVH, DigitalOcean, etc).
- These IPs are easily flagged due to known ASN ownership, lack of consumer ISP traits, and widespread abuse by bots, scrapers, and VPNs.
- Most sensitive platforms (banks, ticketing, etc.) block or challenge traffic from these ranges.
- Mobile
- Uses IPs assigned by cellular carriers (e.g., Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile), appearing to originate from real mobile devices on 3G/4G/5G networks.
- Due to NAT pooling and high device trust, mobile IPs are rarely blocked or challenged.
- Combined with device emulation, header spoofing, and anti-fingerprint measures, these proxies are highly favored in fraudulent or stealth-based operations due to their high trust score.
By Protocol
HTTP/HTTPS
- Handles only web traffic (HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2, and HTTPS if tunneled).
- Can modify headers, log content, or enforce URL-level filtering.
- HTTPS is often implemented via CONNECT tunneling, allowing end-to-end encryption — though some proxies may still intercept (see below).
SOCKS (SOCKS4/SOCKS5)
- Protocol-agnostic: forwards any TCP (and with SOCKS5, UDP) traffic without interpreting content.
- Supports non-web protocols like FTP, SSH, BitTorrent, DNS, etc.
- SOCKS5 adds support for authentication, domain name resolution, and UDP association.
SSL/TLS Interception (aka MITM Proxy / SSL Bump)
- Not a proxy protocol per se, but a technique used by some proxies to decrypt and inspect HTTPS traffic.
- Acts as a man-in-the-middle, generating its own TLS certificate to impersonate the target site (requires trusted root CA installed on client).
- Common in enterprise environments for DLP, malware filtering, or compliance.
- Not used in most consumer proxy setups, due to trust, legality, and cert errors.
Part III - What The Fuck Does All Of This Mean?
For us carders? It means that if your target is expecting you to be coming from a specific location, on a specific network, with a specific device type, then you need to be using a static residential regional proxy - for example, a residential proxy located in Portage, Indiana on one of Comcast's network segments located in that area. Is that possible? Of course. Is it going to make it easier to achieve your goals of smoothly logging into a M&T Bank account as a user that normally logs in from his home computer as a Comcast subscriber if he lives in Portage, Indiana? Overwhelmingly. Session cookies are also extremely helpful in this use case - and the use of a residential proxy such as this scenario indicates is often the factor in success or failure.
Without using the appropriate proxy, network security policies in place at the target (M&T Bank in this case) will more than likely flag your login attempt as suspicious, which will often trigger notification to the actual end user via mobile push, require further authentication such as OTP/2FA, or depending on the way the target's policies are implemented, deny authentication outright and/or lock the account from further attempts, even to the legitimate user.
This is the most relevant use case that represents one of the most problematic of situations for carders - and while there is a lot more to discuss regarding how these countermeasures are deployed in defense against unauthorized access, that discussion is outside the scope of what I am presenting to you today.
That is all - at ease, ladies!
For us carders? It means that if your target is expecting you to be coming from a specific location, on a specific network, with a specific device type, then you need to be using a static residential regional proxy - for example, a residential proxy located in Portage, Indiana on one of Comcast's network segments located in that area. Is that possible? Of course. Is it going to make it easier to achieve your goals of smoothly logging into a M&T Bank account as a user that normally logs in from his home computer as a Comcast subscriber if he lives in Portage, Indiana? Overwhelmingly. Session cookies are also extremely helpful in this use case - and the use of a residential proxy such as this scenario indicates is often the factor in success or failure.
Without using the appropriate proxy, network security policies in place at the target (M&T Bank in this case) will more than likely flag your login attempt as suspicious, which will often trigger notification to the actual end user via mobile push, require further authentication such as OTP/2FA, or depending on the way the target's policies are implemented, deny authentication outright and/or lock the account from further attempts, even to the legitimate user.
This is the most relevant use case that represents one of the most problematic of situations for carders - and while there is a lot more to discuss regarding how these countermeasures are deployed in defense against unauthorized access, that discussion is outside the scope of what I am presenting to you today.
That is all - at ease, ladies!
Without using the appropriate proxy, network security policies in place at the target (M&T Bank in this case) will more than likely flag your login attempt as suspicious, which will often trigger notification to the actual end user via mobile push, require further authentication such as OTP/2FA, or depending on the way the target's policies are implemented, deny authentication outright and/or lock the account from further attempts, even to the legitimate user.
This is the most relevant use case that represents one of the most problematic of situations for carders - and while there is a lot more to discuss regarding how these countermeasures are deployed in defense against unauthorized access, that discussion is outside the scope of what I am presenting to you today.
That is all - at ease, ladies!
