When it comes to online anonymity, there’s more than just your IP address that can reveal your identity online. Modern web browsers store a bunch of information that collectively contribute towards profiling that advertisers create to identify and target you online.
This information is retrieved automatically along with the cookies that your web browser stores for websites. If you’re curious about what websites can see, a tool like BrowserScan can easily pull up that information for review.
So, let’s uncover how browser fingerprinting works and how BrowserScan can verify anonymity when you’re connected to Ping Proxies.
What is BrowserScan?
BrowerScan is a comprehensive tool that identifies what websites and services can see through your web browser. It shows you what information can potentially be used to create a browser fingerprint. Therefore, you gain insight into what necessary steps that need to be taken to block or spoof the information.
For example, your IP address is a key indicator that reveals geographic location right down to the zip code, but using an intermediary like a proxy server spoofs the IP address. And with Ping Proxies, you get the freedom to pick from 195+ countries worldwide and geo-target on an ISP level.
5 Things That Your Browser Fingerprint Can Reveal
- IP Address: Every ISP has an IP address that represents its network on the Internet. It’s very easy for websites and services to detect the origin of the IP address due to the information being part of ICANN records.
- webRTC: Web Real Time Communication was designed for web browsers to communicate with each other. However, it can also leak local and public IP addresses even if you’re using a proxy server.
- Device information: A web browser functions on various technologies that can be used to pull information about the device such as the display resolution, language, timezone, operating system, fonts, and more.
- Installed plugins: JavaScript code can reveal the complete list of plugins/extensions that you’ve installed in the web browser. It further adds to the uniqueness and allows websites and advertisers to identify you more accurately.
- Hardware information: The WebGPU API can be used to identify the device’s GPU including its vendor and specific model. Other APIs can even reveal information on connected devices.
What Are the Best Proxies for Online Anonymity?
What type of proxies you use is just as important as choosing a reliable proxy provider when it comes to online anonymity. A proxy server that delivers high IP reputation will yield far superior results in evading detection.
Ping Proxies offers three distinct proxy plans:
- Datacenter proxies
- Residential proxies
- Static residential proxies
Datacenter proxies offer the quickest way to get yourself online behind a proxy server. They’re fast, scalable, and affordable, which makes them the most popular choice. However, they’re not without their downside; the IP address is easily detected as a datacenter proxy. It becomes challenging when you’re scraping the web for data.
This is where a residential proxies come into play. Instead of being hosted on datacenters, they’re hosted on real devices running residential Internet connection. At Ping Proxies, we pride ourselves in the ethical sourcing of IPs and making sure that we have the consent of all the peers in the residential network.
While residential proxies are the go-to choice for high anonymity, they lack the reliability and dependability of data center proxies. And it brings us to Ping Proxies’ last, albeit very powerful, proxy offering that merges the best of both worlds: static residential proxies.
A static residential proxy is powered by IP addresses leased from actual Internet Service Providers around the globe. It treads the balance between data center proxy’s speed and reliability and residential proxy’s anonymity.
How to Check Your Proxies With BrowserScan
Verifying the proxy connection should be the first thing you do after connecting to a proxy server. Let’s walk through each step so it’s clearer to you:
1. Sign in to your Ping Proxies dashboard to fetch the proxies. With an active subscription, you only need to head to the residential proxies or static proxies page.
2. The next step involves copying the proxy server information. For Residential proxies, you have the option to specify the parameters such as Country, City, ISP/ASN, and more. Generating the proxies will give you all the information you need to make a proxy connection.
3. Next, either Export the proxies in a .txt file or copy the server address. You can add Ping Proxies in any third-party or in-house application that supports proxy integration. For browsing the web anonymously, there are proxy integrations for web browsers that you can add. Simply copy/paste the proxy server information in the relevant fields, then use the plugin/extension to connect.
4. Head over to BrowserScan. Let the tool run its course and wait for results. If the IP address and geo-location listed are the same as your proxy server, then the proxy connection is working.
As we wrap up, it should be kept in mind that merely spoofing the IP address doesn’t address the various other information the browser can still expose. For example, webRTC can only be blocked in Google Chrome by using a browser extension. You can take the BrowserScan test here before and after using the extension to confirm it’s working.
