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Greyside Blog

Guides, comparisons and how-tos on static proxies — IPv4, ISP, SOCKS5, anti-fraud, automation and the practical side of staying clean online.

Guides
June 15, 2026

Cloudflare reverse proxy vs a classic forward proxy: the real difference

Reverse proxies like Cloudflare and forward proxies like an IPv4 or ISP proxy solve opposite problems. Here's how each one works and when you actually need which.

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Comparisons
June 13, 2026

Scrapy vs Playwright: which scraping tool fits your project

Scrapy is built for speed and scale on predictable HTML; Playwright drives a real browser through JavaScript-heavy pages. Here's how to pick — and where proxies fit in.

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Guides
June 12, 2026

Anti-detect browsers: what they do and when you actually need one

An anti-detect browser hides far more than your IP — it rewrites the whole device fingerprint. Here's how they work, who needs them, and why they're useless without a clean proxy behind them.

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Guides
June 11, 2026

What a firewall is and why every connection needs one

A firewall decides which traffic gets through and which gets dropped — the first line of defence between your network and everything else. Here's how it works and how to set one up sensibly.

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Guides
June 10, 2026

Is web scraping legal? What actually decides it

Scraping isn't illegal by default — but it isn't a free pass either. What matters is the data, the jurisdiction, and how you collect it. Here's the practical version.

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Use cases
June 9, 2026

Website testing tools: a practical overview

From Selenium to PageSpeed Insights — the tools teams actually use to test functionality, load and performance, plus how proxies let you test from anywhere in the world.

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Use cases
June 8, 2026

Competitor analysis in e-commerce: building a system that runs itself

Prices, promotions, SEO, ad creative — watching competitors by hand doesn't scale. Here's how to build automated competitive intelligence, and why clean proxies are the foundation.

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Guides
June 7, 2026

IP address tracking: how it works and how to protect yourself

Your IP reveals more than you think — and less than people fear. Here's what tracking actually exposes, the tools that do it, and the practical ways to mask your real address.

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Comparisons
June 6, 2026

ISP vs residential proxies: what's the difference and which to use

Both look like real users to a website, but they get there in opposite ways. ISP proxies are fast and static; residential proxies are widely distributed but slower. Here's how to choose.

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Comparisons
June 5, 2026

Residential vs datacenter proxies: speed, cost and trust

Datacenter proxies are fast and cheap; residential proxies are trusted and hard to block. The right pick depends on whether your target checks the network owner.

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Guides
June 4, 2026

What are proxies for? A plain guide to what they do

A proxy sits between you and the internet and swaps your IP for its own. That one move enables anonymity, access, security and automation. Here's the full picture.

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Comparisons
June 3, 2026

Web crawling vs web scraping: what's the difference

Crawling discovers and indexes pages across the web; scraping extracts specific data from them. They overlap, but they're built for different jobs — here's how they split.

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Guides
June 2, 2026

How to avoid getting banned while scraping

Bans aren't random — sites flag patterns. Understand what triggers them and the fixes are straightforward: clean IPs, sane request rates, real headers and human-like behaviour.

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Guides
June 1, 2026

A step-by-step guide to text parsing

Text parsing turns messy web pages and documents into structured data you can use. Here's the full workflow — tools, stages, proxies, storage and the errors to expect.

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Guides
May 31, 2026

Elite proxies in 2026: still relevant, or outdated?

Elite proxies hide not just your IP but the fact you're using a proxy at all. In 2026 that's necessary but no longer sufficient — here's what actually defeats modern detection.

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Guides
May 30, 2026

Transparent proxies: the intermediary that controls access

A transparent proxy works without the user configuring anything — filtering content, caching pages and balancing load behind the scenes. Here's what it does and where it fits.

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Guides
May 29, 2026

Where proxies fit in a security setup

A proxy isn't a security product on its own, but it's a useful layer — hiding infrastructure, anonymising traffic, filtering content and supporting anti-fraud. Here's the honest picture.

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Guides
May 28, 2026

What an SSL proxy is and when you need one

An SSL proxy carries your traffic over an encrypted HTTPS channel, so even an intercepted request reveals nothing. Here's how it differs from a plain proxy and where it earns its place.

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Guides
May 27, 2026

DNS proxy: what it does, and what it doesn't

A DNS proxy sits between you and the name servers — caching lookups, filtering bad domains and unblocking geo-restricted sites. It's fast and useful, but it isn't anonymity. Here's the honest split.

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Comparisons
May 26, 2026

Reverse proxy software: NGINX, HAProxy, Traefik, Caddy and Apache compared

If you're putting a reverse proxy in front of your own services, the choice is really between five tools. Here's what each is good at — load balancing, TLS, caching and ease of setup.

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Guides
May 25, 2026

Web scraping in PHP: from Goutte to Symfony's components

Goutte was the go-to PHP scraping library for years — but it's deprecated now. Here's how PHP scraping actually works today, using the Symfony components Goutte became a wrapper for.

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Guides
May 24, 2026

How to choose a proxy location: what country actually matters for

The country your proxy sits in affects speed, legal exposure and what you can reach. Here's how to weigh distance, jurisdiction and infrastructure instead of guessing.

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Guides
May 23, 2026

IP banned? How blocks happen and how to get back online

An IP ban locks you out of a site, a forum or an ad account. Here's why it happens, how to confirm it, and the realistic ways to regain access — cleanly.

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Guides
May 22, 2026

Can your ISP see what you browse? What's visible and how to hide it

Your internet provider can see more of your activity than you'd think — and less than you might fear. Here's what's actually visible, the mistakes people make, and how to stay private.

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Guides
May 21, 2026

How SSL and TLS work: the encryption behind HTTPS

Every padlock in your address bar is SSL/TLS doing its job. Here's how the handshake works, why there are two kinds of encryption involved, and what the certificate actually proves.

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Guides
May 20, 2026

How to set up a proxy in Microsoft Edge

Edge uses Windows' system proxy settings, with command-line flags for finer control. Here's how to configure, override and verify a proxy in Edge — the right way.

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Comparisons
May 19, 2026

Anti-detect browsers compared: how to pick one (and what to look for)

GoLogin, AdsPower, Multilogin, Dolphin Anty and the rest all promise the same thing. Here's what actually separates them, and the criteria that matter before the brand names.

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