Last Updated on January 19, 2024 by theadmin

Should You Buy an Elite Proxy?

Any term or reference to do with proxies or VPNs is generally open to a few interpretations.  However some, are just plain misleading! Take for example the phrase ‘elite proxies’ which you’ll see all over the place. Now using the adjective elite would obviously imply that they’re better than all the other proxies, but in many cases this is simply not the case.

 Probably the most accurate description is something like this – an elite proxy is one that cannot be detected.  In technical terms this would be a proxy something like this –

• Doesn’t forward the REMOTE_ADDR field (which reveals proxy address)
• Doesn’t send, forward or reveal your real IP address e.g in the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR or HTTP_VIA header.
• Is fast and has unlimited available bandwidth
• Is not vulnerable to the WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) leak. 

That’s pretty much your anonymity protected, it’s not going to easy to detect the use of any proxy which does this.  It’s probably still not enough to justify the term ‘elite’ but it’s the definition that most decent proxy providers will use.    However just because a proxy is described as elite, doesn’t mean that it will be suitable for your purposes indeed it could be completely useless.

Remember though, that loads of proxy providers describe their servers as elite, including some of that are merely scraped as bulk proxies for free off the internet.  It’s certainly no guarantee of anything, you need to ask questions, test services and assess their real anonymity not rely on often false descriptions.

How I Managed to Buy Elite Proxies for Instagram which Lost All My Instagram Accounts !

So here’s a cautionary tale from a few years ago.  Now I’m not an Instagram marketing expert, but I have over the years had some degree of success on that particular social platform.   Also coming from a computer security background, was reasonably clued up on  what sort of proxies where effective in hiding your identity.   So I kind of figured I would have no problem running a few extra Instagram accounts and managing them with some software. 

So you’d think that I would have no problem picking out some super elite proxies to protect my accounts and operate safely.   Well I’m afraid it didn’t quite work out like that.  These accounts were fairly valuable, not life changing but certainly brought in a steady income.  They were very niche specific and had been grown fairly slowly with Jarvee and a couple of other tools.  All was fine until I decided to ‘play safe’ and invest in some better elite proxies to help grow them even further.  A few weeks later all those accounts were gone, several months of work and posting all consigned to history.  The proxies were fast, well configured and managed so why did this happen ???

Most of the social platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook have pretty advanced systems for detecting the use of proxies and VPNs.   Any proxy which forwarded any of the above headers would be instantly identified for instance.    So a proxy must have a decent level of anonymity otherwise it’s not worth using at all.  In fact being flagged as using a proxy server is most certainly more damaging than not one using one at all.  The easiest way to make this happen is to use a free proxy list from the internet.

Yet there is another issue, that’s extremely important to using any proxy and that’s the actual IP addresses it uses.   After all the IP address is what you’re trying to hide so it’s important to realise that your replacing it with whatever address the proxy assigns to your connection.

One of the most important factors, is the classification of the IP address as this determines how the social platforms regard your connection.  We discus on this site the relative merits between datacentre and residential addresses, which you require largely depends on the platform you’re using.  However without doubt the safest and most anonymous addresses are those assigned the residential classification.  This is because it is residential addresses which are assigned to home users and is the mark of an ordinary surfer.   Although always remember that people using these platforms from work will be largely routed through a corporate proxy and hence have a commercial IP address so it’s not completely straight forward.

So there you go, a well configured and secure proxy with a selection of residential IP addresses will be enough to allow you to act completely anonymously as you manage your multiple accounts?  Unfortunately although it sounds like a good solution there is another a problem which I found out to my cost and why you need to be especially wary of cheap residential proxies.

Not All Residential IP Addresses Are Safe

 One of main headaches for proxy providers is to protect their IP addresses from abuse.  If someone starts spamming from a couple of IP addresses irrespective of whether they are commercial or residential they’re going to get flagged or completely blacklisted.   Anything else from that range will probably be flagged for special attention too.  Now if you’re just using the social platform then this will be of no real consequence. However if you try and manage or post from a few accounts or any sort of promotional activity then you’re accounts will be at huge risk.

This is the real danger of using unknown IP addresses for managing accounts on a social network platform.  If they’re shared with other users then they become extremely risky to use.  Concurrent use is risky enough, i.e. if the same IP addresses are being used across multiple accounts. However if you use previously blacklisted accounts then anything you do will set the alarm bells ringing.  Remember it’s the quality of the IP addresses which are important and usually reflected in the proxy server price.  The easiest way to bring down the unit costs is to overuse the addresses, worth considering if you’re comparing the proxy server price of different suppliers.

Which is exactly what happened to me with twenty or so really profitable Instagram accounts which I was managing through Jarvee.  My promotional settings were ultra conservative, yet slowly one by one my accounts were deleted.  There was nothing in the content that was vaguely controversial and they were fairly well established.

Any new accounts created using the same IP addresses suffered a similar fate.  There was nothing wrong with the proxies, how they were configured only the IP addresses that were assigned to them.  The addresses were pretty toxic to that specific platform having been obviously linked to other promotional accounts previously.  Any account they touched was flagged and was unlikely to survive for long.

Use Platform Specific IP Addresses

The problem with buying proxies now has become slightly more complicated than just looking at the configuration basics.  The IP address is equally as important, and increasingly becoming the focus of the social platforms anti-promotional efforts.  As they become increasingly under pressure to generate advertising income, it’s likely  that direct money making accounts will be targeted even more.  Currently Instagram only allows five accounts by each user, so this should be considered the limit of managing on each address.  

In reality most of the successful marketers I know on Instagram tend to stick to a one-to-one ratio.  Although sites like Facebook, Twitter and some of the other social platforms are a bit more lenient.  Much is probably dependent on the type of accounts you manage and the amount of promotional material.  Certainly anyone who tries to grow their accounts aggressively will have to be  much more careful.

Most of the professional providers have now moved away from generic proxies for this very reason.  By specifying specific proxies for certain platforms it’s easier to maintain the integrity of those addresses.   So you’ll find Instagram proxies, Twitter Proxies, Pinterest proxies and so on.  Most of these are provided on some sort of rotating proxy set up so the addresses are rotated automatically which reduces the likelihood of individual addresses being abused.

Of course, you can still buy private residential proxies with addresses only you are allowed to use.  This is arguably the safest option and if you’re marketing or researching across multiple platforms it’s probably cheaper.  However for specific platforms they are comparatively expensive when compared against a rotating residential proxy with a pool of  IP addresses reserved for a specific purpose.

Any decent proxy provider now will usually provide proxies for specific purposes, so I’d stay away from any who don’t. There are some exceptions – the residential and mobile IP address provider Luminati has so many available addresses that it should be safe, although they’re not a cheap option either. 

Our recommendation is Storm Proxies who will be able to supply the right proxy for your needs and at a competitive price.  They also unlike most providers own and operate their own hardware too which gives them much more control over the hosts.  It’s difficult to supply and elite proxies on rented hardware using other people’s addresses, so watch the others.

Try them here at  – 

Storm Proxies

Picking the right proxies is not actually  that hard as long as you budget for it.  However remember to check with your provider what the latest requirements are for the platform you want to use.