The proxy & privacy glossary

A residential proxy routes your traffic through a real IP address assigned by an Internet Service Provider to a genuine home or mobile device, making requests look like ordinary consumer traffic.

A rotating proxy automatically assigns a different IP address to your requests, either on every request or at set intervals, spreading traffic across a large pool.

SOCKS5 is a versatile proxy protocol that forwards any kind of TCP or UDP traffic without interpreting it, supporting authentication and use well beyond web browsing.

Split tunneling lets you choose which apps or sites go through the VPN and which use your normal connection, instead of routing everything through the tunnel.

A sticky session keeps the same proxy IP address for a set period, so multi-step actions like logging in and checking out complete from one consistent identity.

A transparent proxy intercepts traffic without requiring client configuration and passes along the user's real IP, so it does not hide identity.

A user agent is a string your browser sends with every request that identifies the browser, its version, and the operating system to the website.

Web scraping is the automated extraction of data from websites, typically using scripts or tools that request pages and parse their content at scale.

A WebRTC leak exposes your real IP address through the browser's built-in real-time communication feature, even while a VPN or proxy is active.