Proxies are sort of “middlemen” who are the go-between a remote location on the internet and you. If you are a United Kingdom citizen who is visiting, say France, you would want to use a proxy server to connect to your home country to access the sites there. This is because the internet service provider (ISP) in France would assign your computer a French IP address and the site in the UK would block your access.
As we said earlier, a proxy server is a sort of gateway that is used for many purposes, like the example we set before you. Before they became widely known, it was possible to hide behind anonymous proxy servers to mask your IP and quite a lot of this activity was offered for free. These days though, free proxy servers cannot perform the kind of tasks you would need them to do. A lot of websites these days control your access by location. Say, for example, if you want to watch BBC iPlayer, you will need to be in the UK because the access is locked to that location.
To get around this little problem, you would need to use a proxy that will make the site in the UK think that you are in the country. You can also employ the services of a virtual private network (VPN), but it would be more expensive, and you wouldn’t want to spend precious surfing time buffering the video. So what are the types of scenarios when you would need a UK proxy?
Making Money Online
Auctions
E-commerce website eBay has some great deals available, and if you have noticed them, rest assured, a thousand others have too. Let’s suppose you have fallen in love with a certain product and want to bid on it. But there is a small glitch; the reseller in the UK has all the goods available but does not like to ship internationally. Now it would be ideal if you knew someone who lived in the UK to bid for the item and buy it for you, only to be picked up by you later. But we do not live in Bohemia, so you would have to think of another way.
So, in order to put a bid on the item of your choice, you would need a proxy to let the website think you are in the UK. Reputed providers will supply with dozens of locations inside the UK so you can place your bid safely and successfully.
Classified Advertisements
Craigslist was founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark to distribute emails about local events to his friends initially. Little did he know then that the website would grow to become one of the largest sources of listings, jobs, housing, classifieds and so much more. But as its popularity has grown, Craigslist is something that will be inaccessible to you if you want to post in the UK and you don’t live there.
Thus, you face geoblocking, a rather frustrating, recurring event in the life of an advertiser. What’s worse is that Craigslist implements this practice at both country and state level. This means that you are recognized by the server and are limited in doing what you can or cannot do. But if you employ the use of residential proxies, you can connect with an IP that corresponds to the location you want to post an ad in and go right ahead with it.
Optimizing SEO Campaigns
As an SEO expert, you may have come across a message telling you that Google thinks you are making too many requests and needs to block its service. One way to overcome this problem is to solve the CAPTCHA that Google provides, and then you can continue working. But you cannot be doing that every time Google presents you with this, because it would take up a lot of your time. The reason behind this is that Google thinks you are not human and hence asks for proof.
To circumvent this problem, you would have to invest in UK-based residential proxies, that would not only let the system know that you are in the location that you claim to be in, but also human. The proxy would also check the search engine rankings, eliminate the need to fill CAPTCHA and take care of the task of registering for multiple accounts on a website.
Managing Social Media Networks
As a modern marketer, you need the help of social media to boost your business. If you are not already clued in, you probably don’t know how much you have been missing out on. But if you are a marketer in say, Uganda, you may face a problem promoting your products in the UK because of the geographical restrictions social media websites put on advertisers. And if you need to increase subscribers and followers, you would need a way around it.
Thankfully, there are proxies available for all kinds of social media that bundle your solutions in the form of tools, that can like and unlike pins for Pinterest, Retweet, post and reply to Tweets (on Twitter), share and comments on photos on Instagram and so on. To be an the safe side better choose the private UK proxies.
Buying Online
Copping Sneakers
You may have come across hyped releases of sneakers on Instagram or Facebook and have been wanting to at least try it out once or maybe you are a reseller who wants to get their hands on more than one pair. But the hitch is that these websites only allow one item per person, and more often than not, are geographically restricted. And for this, sneaker proxies come to the rescue.
These proxies successfully hide your IP address, allowing you more than one chance to buy multiple pairs of sneakers if you desire so. These servers are located in locations near sneaker sites such as the UK in order to optimize the performance of your sneaker bot and make you appear as several people in your desired location.
Geo-Restricted Web Content
Are you an expat in a country where you cannot access your hometown channels? Or in a country where you want to access entertainment content from the UK? Or you want to have a Skype session while in the United Arab Emirates or simply want to watch the UK version of Netflix? What is stopping you? Regional restrictions, of course!
Thankfully, there is a way out of it in the form of proxies that will give you the power to overcome most of these restrictions. The beauty of it is, that it is not illegal and you are well within your rights to use them. Well, how about that!
Anonymous Surfing
Want to surf the web anonymously without revealing your IP address? You would want to do this if you are in a country that has restricted access to certain websites within the country. These proxies will make you appear as if you are a visitor from the UK, and hence, let you browse the website without a stumble. That’s how easy it is.
Conclusion
You would need a UK proxy to be able to unlock geo-restricted content and gain access to the services within the country. They are a wonderful tool if you indulge in the activities listed above. The wide range of proxy servers has made it possible for people to transcend the barriers that restrict them and access the resources of their choice.
