Why Use US Residential Proxies?
The Internet was designed to be a global village, but the need for localization of content, geo-targeting, and abiding by copyright laws have made it not to be so. For many web services on the Internet, what you have access to is determined by your geolocation.
For other web services, except you are from a specific list of supported countries, you won’t be allowed to access their services.
If you want to access the Internet as Internet users in the United States have access to it, then you will need to make use of US proxies in other to get US IP addresses which would qualify you to access US targeted content.
For most popular services, datacenter proxies are not effective, and that is why you will need US residential proxies?
Our focus here is on residential proxies, and you will be provided recommendations on the providers you can get them from.
Is It Illegal to Spoof Your Location to the US?
The process of using proxies with US IP addresses when you are not in the US is known as geolocation spoofing. From the above, you can see that it is required in other to access the US targeted web content.
How legal is this?
Currently, there is no law that makes it illegal to do so, as most countries' cyber law does not criminalize proxy usage even when your actual location is spoofed. This does not mean the web services will allow such. In fact, it is against the term of usage of most web services, and your access will be denied if you are found spoofing your real location.
What Can You Do with US Residential Proxies?
There are many things you can do with US residential proxies outside of the US. One of the popular uses of US residential proxies is for streaming and entertainment purposes. There are services such as Netflix US that are available only to users in the US – some YouTube videos are also like that.
If you are also into SEO looking to collect SERP data from Google US in other to do SEO and improve your ranking, you will need to make use of proxies from the US; else, you will not have access to Google the way US audience would as Google SERP is localized and based on one’s geolocation.
There are other uses such as ads verification, site localization testing, price monitoring, and the purchase of items only available to the US audience, among others.
Why is Using US Residential Proxies is Not Required?
As good as they may sound, there are situations when using US residential proxies are not the solutions to your problem. Just as the US has certain web content available to it, other locations do too. If you need to access, let say, the BBC iPlayer service, for instance, US proxies will not help you. Instead, what you need is a UK proxy.
The major reason why you need US residential proxies is to access content available only to the US audience or if you want web services to treat you as a user from the US. If you do not have the need to appear as surfing the Internet from the US, then there is no reason why you should make use of them.
What are the Best US Residential Proxies in the Market?
The above is just a list of proxies that work. As stated earlier, they are not the same and differ in their features. So, which are the best providers? Bright Data, formerly Luminati, is regarded as the best provider for US residential proxies.
However, they can be expensive – an affordable alternative to Bright Data is Smartproxy. Both Bright Data and Smartproxy have their pricing based on consumable bandwidth and will deny access when you exhaust the bandwidth allocated to you.
If what you require proxies for will consume a lot of bandwidth, then Shifter is the best as it allows users to enjoy unlimited bandwidth.