What is a residential proxy in ad fraud?
A residential proxy routes traffic through real home internet connections, so a bot running in a data center appears to be an ordinary household visitor. Fraudsters use residential proxy networks to disguise automated ad traffic, defeating simple filters that block data-center IP addresses. The home IPs often come from apps or devices whose owners unknowingly share their connection.
Blocking data center traffic is one of the oldest GIVT techniques. Residential proxy services undermine it by renting out millions of consumer IP addresses, sourced through bundled SDKs in free apps, browser extensions or outright malware on streaming boxes and routers. To an ad server, the request looks like it came from a normal broadband customer.
Detection therefore looks beyond the IP: mismatches between the IP's location and the device's time zone or language, many unrelated "users" behind one address, TLS and browser device fingerprinting that reveals automation, and behavior that does not match a human session. Proxy-sourced traffic is generally treated as SIVT.