What is an IP Address?

An IP Address, also known as "Internet Protocol", is a unique identifier assigned to a user browsing the internet through their Internet Service Provider (ISP). Just as we use an email address or phone number to identify a person, an IP address is linked to an individual user and can be associated with their online activity. An IP reputation check for each IP address makes it easy to identify high risk users or suspicious payments and clicks. It can be difficult for users to frequently switch an assigned IP address from their ISP, which is why internet users often use proxies, VPNs, or Tor to mask their identity.

What is IP Fraud Scores & Reputation?

IP risk scores with IPQS use intelligent scoring to identify connections that have a history of abusive behavior, usually as part of a botnet or malware network, which favor residential IP proxies. Perform an IP reputation lookup to analyze the risk for any behavior originating from that specific IP address, such as the quality of users, clicks, payments, or registrations. Quickly determine how likely an IP address is to engage in malicious behavior through an easy to read IP address fraud score.

IPQS monitors hundreds of millions of user actions per day to correlate fraudulent behavior to IP addresses in every region of the world. Analyze IP reputation data points such as Recent Abuse, Abuse Velocity, Fraud Score, and Bot Status.

What is a Proxy Connection?

Proxies are used to mask the identity of a user by processing the internet connection through another server. A proxy connection is made via a proxy server, which serves as a hub through which internet requests are processed between websites and the end user. Websites receiving these requests would only see the proxy server's IP address and not the user's real IP address. Therefore, a user in another country could mask their true location details to bypass geo restrictions and remain anonymous. This type of fraud is popular among streaming services.

Abusive users also utilize proxies to engage in fraudulent activity such as creating duplicate accounts, posting SPAM, or generating fraudulent transactions from different proxy IP addresses without revealing their true identity. Additional fraud prevention measures can be layered in with proxy detection tests to verify accurate user location.

What Types of Proxies Does IPQS Detect?

Incoming connections from bad actors can use a wide variety of proxy types, including legacy abuse from anonymous proxies, SOCKS, transparent proxies — in addition to VPN services, TOR exit nodes, datacenter proxies, residential IP proxies, and even mobile networks. While TOR usage, datacenters, and VPNs have noisy footprints and are suitable for IP-based bans, other types of IP connections such as mobile proxies and residential proxy providers can be more difficult to detect when analyzing the true IP address reported by the user or visitor.

More sophisticated fraudsters favor using residential proxy attacks, which is why IPQS has you covered with a 99.95% accuracy rate when analyzing the proxy server IP address to detect residential proxy IPs, zombies, botnets, and similar bad proxy IPs with less detectable footprints.

What Info Can I Get From an IP Address Lookup?

Many users are surprised by how much data they can gain by performing an IP Address lookup. Accurate geolocation information may be one of the most useful data points, locating the user within 25 miles of the actual user in over 99.95% of lookup events. IP address queries can also provide more technical data points such as the Internet Service Provider (ISP), time zone, Autonomous System Number (ASN), blacklist status, hostname, connection type, device details, and the status of the IP address as a proxy connection.

Real-time API calls provide IP lookup details with IP address Fraud Score and overall risk analysis to determine how likely an active user on this IP address is to engage in abusive behavior. IPQS' vast threat network provides greater hits for abusive behavior, which produces intelligent IP risk scores that identify bad users, risky payments, and bots. Easily detect proxies and malicious behavior signals.

Does Proxy Detection Work?

Proxy detection can work exceptionally well with the right service provider to uncover users hiding their identity behind an anonymized connection. The worst offenders of fraud can control millions of IP addresses at one time. This is a great challenge for proxy detection service providers that must monitor IP addresses 24/7 for newly compromised devices which could serve as a proxied connection.

IPQualityScore provides the most accurate proxy detection service in the industry, detecting mobile & desktop devices as soon as they become compromised by botnets or malware, exhibit high risk activity, or allow users to tunnel into a connection. IPQS even detects IP addresses that serve as residential proxies and private VPN servers.

What Types of Connections Do Proxies Use?

IP addresses that function as proxies or VPNs use a wide range of connection types. Residential proxy connections are the most favored since they are very difficult to identify as a high risk IP address and tend to be very costly to access. Data center IP addresses are by far the cheapest and most abundant, since they are the easiest to access. Tor connections are also a very popular source, yet they are have a very obvious footprint which makes it easy to identify Tor IP addresses.

More advanced fraudsters attempting to bypass fraud prevention services will typically use a residential proxy network, which can also access connections from mobile proxies. Since most fraud prevention vendors do not have great insight into compromised connections on residential IP addresses, fraudsters attempt to exploit this vulnerability. IPQS provides accurate detection for residential proxy providers and fraudulent IPs across any proxy type.