Detect Proxies, VPNs & Tor

While there are many legitimate uses for proxy servers, they can be exploited by malicious actors. detect proxy servers can be used to hide a user’s true location, manipulate their connection speed and even serve malware. This makes it extremely important to ensure that your site can effectively detect proxies and protect against the fraud and abuse they cause.

Proxies can be detected in a number of ways, but the most common is to look for a specific header within the HTTP request. This is commonly referred to as the X-Forwarded-For header. Several services can trigger this header, including cellular networks, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) like Cloudflare and Imperva, and select ISPs. While this method is very effective and provides a good foundation for proxy detection, it’s also not entirely accurate. Through extensive testing, we’ve found that this method can trigger a large number of false-positive connections as well as block legitimate traffic from cellular networks and some ISPs.

Protecting Your Online Business: The Ultimate Guide to Identifying and Handling Anonymous Proxy Users

Another way to detect a proxy is to perform a reverse DNS lookup on the IP address in question. This can be performed using a tool like nslookup or by running a script on your server. This will reveal if the IP address is configured with a Proxy. However, this technique is not entirely reliable as a residential proxy will often hide all DNS requests to maintain a low footprint. Likewise, some users that operate web cameras and game servers may also have open ports on their network that could be triggered as a proxy by this test.