Guides, Tutorials & Insights
Learn about residential proxies, web scraping, data collection strategies, and industry best practices from the Shifter team.
Are Residential Proxies Legal? What You Need to Know
Using a proxy is legal in most places. What you do through it, and how the network sourced its addresses, is where the actual risk sits.
James Meadow · August 31, 2026 What Is a Peer-to-Peer Residential Proxy Network?
Instead of servers in a datacenter, the network is made of ordinary people's devices. Here is how that works, what you get from it, and what you give up.
Matt Brown · August 30, 2026 How Residential Proxy Providers Ethically Source Their IPs
The addresses are real people's home connections, so the question that matters is whether they agreed. Here is what good sourcing looks like and how to check.
James Meadow · August 30, 2026 Which Countries Have the Best Residential Proxy Availability?
There is no fixed ranking, and the only availability that matters is the one in your markets at your concurrency. Here is what drives it and how to measure it.
James Meadow · August 30, 2026 How to Plan Request Volume and Concurrency on Residential Proxies
Work backwards from the records you need to the requests, concurrency and bandwidth they imply. The arithmetic is simple and it stops most capacity surprises.
Matt Brown · August 29, 2026 Are Residential Proxies Safe? Security Risks and How to Reduce Them
Routing traffic through someone else's connection carries real risk. Here is what a provider can and cannot see, where the danger sits, and how to reduce it.
James Meadow · August 29, 2026 Residential Proxies for Beginners: A simple Starter Guide
What a residential proxy is, when you need one, and how to make your first request. Written for someone who has never used a proxy before.
Matt Brown · August 28, 2026 Residential Proxy Glossary: Key Terms Every Buyer Should Know
Vendors use the same words to mean different things. Here are the terms that actually affect what you buy, in plain language and grouped by decision.
James Meadow · August 27, 2026 Why Accurate Rank Tracking Requires Residential Proxies
Your tracker says position three, your client sees seven, and both are looking at real results. Usually the difference is the network your checks go out over.
James Meadow · August 26, 2026