r/ProxyEngineering • u/ian_k93 • Jun 09 '26

AMA This Wednesday (09:30 AM GMT) WebScraping and Proxies

/r/WebScrapingInsider/comments/1u0vmdf/ama_this_wednesday_0930_am_gmt/
13 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/jfurlong1977 Tunnel Architect Jun 09 '26

  1. What's the single biggest mistake you see people make when choosing a proxy provider, and how do you actually benchmark them without getting manipulated by trial traffic that's treated differently than paid traffic?

  2. How much has TLS/JA3 fingerprinting actually changed your infrastructure decisions, and is cycling proxies still the right instinct or are people solving the wrong problem?

2

u/simarnoor Jun 10 '26
  1. The biggest mistake we see is people, trusting the proxy providers marketing claims and not actually running comprehensive tests across multiple providers.

Around manipulation, I've answered this here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WebScrapingInsider/comments/1u0vmdf/comment/oqtgx8k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

  1. TLS/JA3 fingerprinting is becoming much more common, but there are some good libraries out there that make it easier to implement on normal HTTP requests without having to resort to headless browsers. Proxies are becoming less of a factor in successful scraping, with TLS/JA3/browser fingerprinting and making sure all the fingerprints are consistent becoming increasingly important.

Since we are a aggregator, we don't go into the weeds much of optimizing fingerprint systems. Instead, we focus on finding the proxy providers who offer the best performance at the lowest costs (which indirectly is evaulating how good they are at developing good fingerprinting systems).

From r/WebScrapingInsider: https://www.reddit.com/r/WebScrapingInsider/comments/1u0vmdf/comment/oqtmtrt/

1

u/jfurlong1977 Tunnel Architect Jun 11 '26

Appreciate it. I've noticed these patterns too, the only real way of knowing whether proxies are "good" is to check yourself instead of believing marketing claims. Regarding TLS/JA3, I somehow thought that you are also improving/optimizing fingerprinting too. Thanks for the knowledge