If you are ready to embark on a data harvesting mission or need to conduct a marketing research involving scraping info from an anti-bot protected website, you want to have the right tool to complete your mission without getting detected.
A random IP generated by a proper proxy can help you manage the situation.
In this article we will talk about various ways to generate a random IP address, and all the risks pertinent to such ways.
We will describe what is a random IP address and random IP generator and see how proxies help in generating such IPs. And, of course, you will have a better understanding when you should have this ability to generate a random IP address and for what business purposes.
We will go into details about using rotating proxies for generating random IPs and avoiding problems that you may have if you decide to go for free public alternatives at your own risk.
What is the random IP address?
Now, what is a random IP? A random IP is an IP assigned to your computer by a service such as VPN or proxy provider randomly taken from a pool of IPs made available to your account.
Why would you need a random IP address? You need to generate a random IP (or rotate your IP) when you engage in one of the following operations online:
- To conduct business intelligence mission through data scraping involving analysis of various metrics;
- To perform qualitative or quantitative business research related to some markets, social groups and data arrays stored on some web resources;
- To override geo-restricted limitations imposed on some web resources containing data required for research or analysis.
Fake vs. Random IP Address
A random IP address should not be confused with a fake IP. A fake IP (or a random fake IP address) could be a mock or dummy IP used by developers for various testing purposes. These IPs can be obtained by developers through fake IP generators and are not meant to function as real proxy IPs to alter your location or provide you with extra security.
What is a Random IP Generator?
An IP generator with random addresses on the output is a tool that lets you generate multiple IPs for coding use cases. This is a way of how to change a random IP address that is normally used by developers for testing purposes. For instance, a developer would create a random IP through such a generator to see if a piece of code performs properly inside the browser.
For a regular user a good alternative to a random IP generator would be a cheap datacenter proxy that could perform the alternation of IPs in an automatic mode or with settings that you specify.
We will discuss the benefits and use cases related to rotating proxies later on in this article but now let’s consider what risks can bring the use of free public randome IP addresses.
Risks of Using Free IP Generators
The first and primary risk of using free random IPs you found online would be the danger of leaking your personal information to the third party via such a random IP generator.
This can happen in a variety of ways. For example, if you apply for free tools on a site through some kind of online ad of “free” IPs without properly protecting your original IP (with a VPN or proxy). Or, you can provide access to your device by signing up and using the free tool.
All this can lead to selling your personal data to the third party for further illegitimate use.
So, basically this “free” random public IP address will not come as “free” at the end of the day. This is why proxy providers charge money for proven and tested IPs. And when you buy proxies from such providers, you have an assurance that you can use the IPs safely and securely.
How you can generate random IP addresses with rotating proxies
You are probably already familiar with the concept of rotating proxies. So, how can you make an IP address random with the use of private proxies? You need special random IP address proxies. These proxies, sometimes referred to as rotating or backconnect proxies, are successfully used for scraping and browsing just like any regular proxy but using different IP for every session of accessing a target website. In other words, these proxies are programmed to change their IP for each session or for a certain period of time. And each time a new random IP is selected from a pool of IPs secured for this proxy.
How do rotating proxies work?
You can think of a rotating proxy as a random IP address changer. It hides your device’s real address and replaces it with a random IP just like a regular proxy but does it in an automated mode. To illustrate the operation of a rotating proxy just follow these three steps.
Step 1. A request is generated by your computer that goes to the proxy server and gets masked with a proxy. The IP of this proxy is retrieved from a pool of proxies, which represent one rotating proxy server.
Step 2. The target site responds with the requested information and the data is returned to your computer via the same route.
Step 3. A new request is initiated and this time the proxy changes its IP by choosing another random IP from the pool. The process of retrieving data repeats under a different IP address.
What are rotating proxies used for?
Now that you have an idea of how a rotating proxy can be used as a random IP proxy to generate an IP for each session, we can discuss the most common areas of application of such proxies.
Since a rotating (or backconnect) proxy is good at making zillions of requests from various IPs over a short timeframe, it has become an ideal tool for scraping missions on search engines and online marketplaces with built-in anti-bot and anti-spam systems. A search engine like Google or e-store like Amazon have a limit for a number of requests sent from a single IP. If you exceed this limit, a red flag is raised automatically and your connection (and IP) may get banned.
Rotating proxies help overcome this problem by using different random IPs for each data request session, so that you can use this proxy for crawling or scraping and complete your mission successfully without alerting the internal anti-bot system.
Another area for using rotating proxies is marketing and reputation intelligence. Here, you may need residential rotating proxies that can be used for a specific country of servers location (i.e. you can use the UK proxies for UK missions while physically being in the US).
Marketing intelligence is all about gaining info on your current standing in the market by carefully studying your competitors. You can use proxies for parsing data (prices, descriptions, images, etc.) from your competitors’ e-stores to be able to produce a better offer for your prospective customers.
And reputation intelligence proxies help pull together an objective image of how you are viewed by your customers online. You can find all the reviews published online and react to them in a timely fashion.
These are just a few examples that show how important it is to use random IPs on proxy-sensitive websites each time you want to scrape such sites.
How to Generate Random IP Addresses For Your Session
Now that you know how important it is to rotate your IP during online missions on some web resources, let’s consider your options for generating random IP addresses.
Option 1 – Leave it to your Internet Service Provider
You can do virtually nothing and rely on your ISP to give you a new random IP address number for each outbound connection. This is not the best option, however, especially considering geo-restricted sites. You will never be able to override such a restriction if the whole pool of IPs from your home country is blocked.
Option 2 – Use a special IP randomizer
Another way to perform the same trick will be through using a special script or program to randomize IPs from a range of addresses (not to be confused with a random IP generator). You can feed a pool of proxies to such a script and expect a new IP on each new connection or after a certain timeframe. This option works but it requires some coding skills and may not be compatible with some automation scraping bots out there.
Option 3 – Use a rotating or backconnect proxy
This may be the most hassle-free and even simple way of randomly changing your IPs. It is totally manageable and configurable from your dashboard. Fully compatible with most of the bots and scrapers out there and does not require extra coding. Also, with residential proxy service you can easily overcome country-wide blocks imposed on some countries. So, if you decide to go by this option, let us know and we will guide you all the way to success here.
How to Choose The Best Random Proxy Provider
When you are out looking for the most reliable random proxy provider please pay attention to the following factors:
- What is the overall experience of this provider in the market? This question is important because it shows if this provider is experienced enough to provide a comprehensive proxy-solution for your case.
- Is this provider familiar with a use case similar to yours? It makes perfect sense to work with a provider that is familiar with similar projects or scenarios.
- What online reviews indicate that it is a good/bad provider? Of course, you have to be careful, since a lot of reviews online are either fake or paid for, but at least you could have an idea about the opinion of other customers on this provider.
- Can you get rotating proxies with random IPs for free for trial? Normally, a provider can give you some proxies for testing. The number of such proxies will depend on your use case.
- Can you have 24/7 tech support to rely upon? A good provider, usually, arranges for continuous round-the-clock support for all his customers regardless of the pool size.
You may think of other concerns that would be relevant to you and ask your provider directly while on site.
Get a Random IP for Every Connection With PrivateProxy
We at PrivateProxy have a vast experience in providing rotating and backconnect proxies to our customers for generating random IP addresses.
We would happily study your use case and suggest the most appropriate proxy solution for the matter based on your performance and location requirements.
Our seasoned team of account managers have carefully studied hundreds of cases of using our proxies and we are well aware about the main challenges you may have while setting up or using the proxies during deployment.
We will prompt you when required on what to avoid and what to pay attention to once you start working with us. Also you will be able to rely on our 24/7 tech support that will be there for you to solve any related issues round-the-clock.
Final Thoughts
While there are a number of ways to generate a random server IP address for your online mission, the most reliable way would be through using a rotating (or backconnect) private proxy. Above, we have considered how to change IP addresses randomly and cases when rotating proxies can be helpful to you.
Now you know that you can totally rely on random IPs while conducting marketing research, scraping SERP (on major search engines) or collecting other sensitive data from highly secured websites.
From this article you also learned how to be able to find the right proxy provider for you once you decide to look for a set of robust and reliable proxies.
If you still have any questions left or unanswered about some of the subjects that we touched in this article, let us know through the chat-box. We will get back with the right answer to you as soon as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Please read our Documentation if you have questions that are not listed below.
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What is a random IP address?
A random IP address is a randomly generated IP address that gets assigned to your device by a VPN, a proxy provider or a special script. Normally, it will be taken from a set of predefined IPs or a pool of IPs.
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How can I use a random IP?
You can use random IPs for various missions on scraping sensitive sites. For instance, you can conduct market research, parse info from search engine results, etc. without any risk of getting banned.
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What are some fake IP addresses?
Let’s define the terminology here. If by a “fake IP address” you mean an address that appears like an IP but not a real IP, you can easily replace dots with commas and get one (for instance, 172,30,255,255 would be a fake IP). But if we are talking about an IP assigned to you by a proxy, it would be a “fake IP” only from the perspective of the site you are visiting. Sort of like a fake ID. And this should work just fine to gain access to the resource.
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How are IP addresses assigned?
There are two major ways an IP is assigned to your machine online by an ISP: a dynamic and a static. With a dynamic IP, the ISP will be assigning you an address from the pool of IPs and with the static way, you will have a permanent IP. Normally, an ISP will have a separate tariff plan for static IPs.
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How to generate an IP address?
If you want to generate an IP for accessing a certain geo-restricted site we can help you with proxy servers that will help you with that. Just start a chat with us below and we will give you a few IPs to choose from.
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Can VPNs change my IP address?
Well, yes! A VPN changes your actual IP address to imitate a connection from a different location.
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How to randomize IP addresses?
You can do it in several ways: - You can rely on your ISP to assign you a new and random IP for each new connection (after breaking up the current one); - By using a special IP randomizer or script. This method is more appropriate for developers or people familiar with coding (when you use random IP addresses for testing purposes, for instance). - Using rotating proxies. Rotating proxies assign you a random IP with each new connection from the pool of IPs made available by your proxy provider.
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Is it safe to use a random IP address?
It is absolutely safe to use a random IP if it comes from a private proxy. If you decide to use a free public random IP, you most likely will subject yourself to a risk of leaking your private data to the third party.
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Is an IP address always the same?
Not really. Normally, when you login to your ISP you are assigned an IP from the pools of addresses available for you. Only if you sign a special contract, can you get a fixed IP assigned to you on a permanent basis. With proxies, this process is controlled by the proxy provider. And the proxy provider, in this case, assigns you IPs from its own pool, depending on the type of proxy you buy.
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Can someone get your real address from IP?
Well, your IP can reveal your geo position (like a city), but it will not narrow it down to your home address. Also, none of the personal information (like your name, phone, etc.) is contained in the IP itself.
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Can I create an IP manually?
If you want to assign a certain IP to your home network device, you should go through the network settings of your computer. For instance, in Windows you can start with NCPA.CPL from the command prompt. Then you will need to assign an IP to your device not conflicting with other devices on your LAN. However, do not attempt to do that without proper understanding of your LAN settings.
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Can someone clone/spoof/steal my IP address?
Although it is extremely difficult to undertake, such hacking methods exist. This is normally referred to as IP spoofing and can be used for DDoS attacks. To prevent IP spoofing, avoid installing any types of malicious shareware that may end up stealing or cloning your IP.
Top 5 posts
In our blog we often cover various types of proxies based on some specifics related either to origination or use of such proxies. By now, we covered the differences between backconnect (or rotating) and static proxies. We also considered various proxies based on the protocol used by the servers (HTTP(S) or SOCKS). And, of course, we touched upon the major difference in proxies based on their origin: datacenter (DC) proxies or residential IPs.