One proxy across five profiles: what the platform actually sees

The address reaches the platform before any script does: it sits in every request, or the answer never gets back to you. Nobody is asked for permission here, and there is no switch that turns it off.

So two accounts from one address are the cheapest thing a platform can join up: nothing has to be compared, the number matched on its own. The fingerprint it reads afterwards, and with a script on the page.

1. 1

   Reads the address

   It comes from the connection itself, before the first line of the page. The header only carries a middleman’s retelling, and a platform is not obliged to believe it.

2. 2

   Looks for neighbours

   The platform has seen other accounts from this address and remembers which.

3. 3

   Reads the machine

   Screen, graphics card, fonts and clock arrive by script on the page.

Put five profiles on one bought address and all five go out through it. Add a second address and the busier of the two still collects three.

Count by the worst address rather than by the average. Three accounts that met on one address are three linked accounts, even when the other two sit apart.

With several addresses there is no need to hand them out profile by profile: the program deals the list of profiles across the list of addresses in a circle, in the order you see the profiles on screen. Five profiles and two addresses give three and two, five and three give two, two and one.

The next deal continues the circle from the address where the last one stopped rather than starting over. Otherwise the same profiles would keep getting the same addresses, and the deal would be pointless.

A profile that is open right now is skipped, and a skipped profile does not consume its address: it goes to the next one in the list. So the circle stays even however many profiles are open at the moment of the deal.

A mobile proxy is bought for a frequent change of address, and changing it by button on five profiles in a row is tiresome. A profile gets a period of its own, and when it runs out the address changes by itself.

Only open profiles get a new address: a closed one has no use for it, and the proxy seller charges for the change. The first change counts from the moment the profile was opened, not from the program start, or a profile opened a minute ago would change its address at once.

A profile with no period of its own takes no part in rotation. Five profiles on one mobile address should therefore be counted per address rather than per profile: one change a minute per address, not five.

A profile takes its machine from its own seed, not from the address. So five profiles on one proxy name five different graphics cards and five different font sets to the platform. The screen drops out of that row: few sizes are in use, and two out of five will share one more often than not.

Of 34 fingerprint values, 20 differed across that five and 14 matched. Eight are held by the shared system template, four by the address itself, and two matched by chance: memory and the heap ceiling are drawn by lot as well. Another five will give another count, most often between 12 and 19.

A profile takes its clock and its language from the country of the address, and rightly so: a German address on Kyiv time reads as a forgery. One address means one country, so one language across all five.

Five different languages behind one shared address would look worse than matching ones. A real network of five machines behind one router speaks the language of its country, not five at once.

Five profiles on one address are linked by the address, and an address changes in a minute. Two copies of one profile are linked by the machine, and the machine stays with the account for good.

So a copied profile gets a machine of its own instead of repeating the original. The settings travel, while the two-factor key and the password stay put: they belong to one account, and a copy is made for another.

1. 1

   The settings travel

   Scenario, fingerprint template, group, notes and tags reach the copy as they are.

2. 2

   The machine does not

   Screen, graphics card, fonts and sound are the copy's own, and hand-picked values are not carried over.

3. 3

   The secrets do not

   The two-factor key and the login with its password stay in the original profile.

Five profiles of one person on one home address read to a platform as one family behind one router. Five ad accounts belonging to five different owners on that same address read differently.

Look at what the profiles do rather than at how many there are. Accounts that walk together in real life are not given away by a shared address; accounts that are supposed to be strangers are given away by it first.

Open two profiles on one address and read what the browser answers in each: address, language, graphics card. The first two have to match and the cards have to differ. The clock does not belong here: in a country with several zones it falls to a profile by lot, and two profiles on one address disagree more often than they agree.

If the address differs, one of the profiles is going around the proxy, and that costs more than any saving. If the screen and the card match, the two profiles are one machine, and the shared address is no longer the main trouble.