Viva La Residential Proxy! How a Distributed, Anonymized Resistance Will Win the Robot War for Limited Edition Sneakers

It’s a war out there!

One on side, you have big organizations who love the internet as long as you use it the way they want you to.

On the other, there’s you. You also love the internet as long as you can use it the way you want to.

This war has many fronts. You might be fighting Netflix one one or a government on another.

Or maybe even major shoe manufacturers!

Here’s a quick description of how it works for the uninitiated:

Sneaker companies release limited edition sneakers to certain geographical markets.

For particular markets, these specially designed (i.e. endorsed by a celebrity or whatnot) sneakers are priced for a few hundred bucks. At normal sneaker prices, in other words.

That means these sales are mainly brand-building efforts and the companies want certain demographic groups (in certain countries) to participate.

To ensure participation from the markets they want, the sneaker companies run these sales with certain restrictions designed to give people in that market a fair shot at buying them.

But capitalism isn’t done with this story yet :)

These sneakers have outrageous resale upsides — so sneaker coppers try to game the system.

There’s no accounting for taste. And some buyers really love these limited edition sneakers.

Sneaker coppers buy these sneakers for a few hundred bucks and hope to resell them maybe even for a few thousand. The more such sneakers they can buy, the more they stand to profit.

So obviously there are some mismatched incentives here.

This result is a “robot war” between the companies and the coppers.

Sneaker coppers use automated software to beat the restrictive — and also automated — sales systems imposed by the sneaker companies.

Especially on the side of the sneaker companies, you can be sure these systems are depending heavily on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Sneaker coppers can use residential proxies for ultimate online camouflage.

There are certain types of IP addresses the sneaker companies’ online sales systems will block. Data center IPs — if they can recognize them as such — will be blocked for sure.

The one type of IP that they don’t want to block, however, is a residential IP address from a certain geographical area they are targeting with their promotion.

Remember that these companies’ target buyers do not live in data centers :) They live in homes just like you.

That’s why a sneaker copper’s ultimate online camouflage is an a residential proxy. With Chainprox it’s more accessible and affordable than ever!

This privacy war is going to heat up on more fronts soon!

Getting locked out of limited edition sneaker lotteries or certain Netflix content is annoying and means you can’t make as much money or get as much value as you want from a service.

Consider sneaker lotteries and Netflix content restrictions as skirmishes in the AI vs online privacy wars that is only going to get hotter over the coming years.

So join the resistance! Join Chainprox!