Fraudsters are getting smarter. So are we.

Enterprise customers have told us that detecting residential proxies is now critical to their fraud prevention efforts. These high-authenticity IPs often slip through traditional proxy detection — and fraudsters are taking full advantage.

That’s why Fingerprint has added residential proxy detection to our existing IP Blocklist Smart Signal. This new beta feature is now available to all enterprise customers.

Now, when Fingerprint detects that a device is connected via a residential proxy IP address, it will return proxy:true, whether it’s a standard or residential proxy. 

Why detecting residential proxies matters in fraud prevention

Residential proxies are hard to catch and easy to misuse. They route traffic through real household devices — like smart TVs or routers — making them appear legitimate. Many users unknowingly become proxy nodes after installing free VPNs, allowing fraudsters to buy access to these residential IPs to:

• Bypass bot detection and fraud filters
• Create fake accounts that look real
• Scrape data at scale
• Commit account takeovers, regional promo abuse, and payment fraud

How to use this signal effectively

While residential proxies are frequently used in fraud, they’re not fraudulent on their own. In some cases, real users voluntarily install proxy-sharing apps in exchange for payment — unknowingly allowing their devices to be used by others for activities like scraping, botting, or bypassing regional restrictions. Additionally, 15-25% of residential IPs may show proxy-like behavior at any given time, depending on how they are routed or resold through proxy networks.

That’s why it’s important to use proxy:true in conjunction with other signals, such as:

• OS mismatch 
• Timezone mismatch 
• Anti-detect browser usage 
• Virtual machine detection

This layered approach helps teams move from flagging anomalies to confidently identifying fraud.

And this is just the beginning — we’re actively developing new heuristics to detect emerging proxy techniques and behavioral red flags that slip past traditional fraud detection methods.

About Smart Signals

Smart Signals are Fingerprint’s enriched device and network-level data points that go beyond device identification to reveal suspicious context, such as proxy or incognito mode usage or OS mismatches. These signals help fraud and risk teams build a more complete, real-time picture of risk.

Get started

Our residential proxy detection beta is now live for all enterprise customers using Smart Signals and will be available soon for all Pro Plus plans, too. If you're already using the IP Blocklist Smart Signal, you’re already getting this additional value — no changes needed on your end.

Want to dive deeper? Read the documentation.